A Knight In Scuffed Converse
by Vandelle
Summary: In which another man comes between Kyoko and Ren ... and he may just be the thing to bring them together at long last. Rated for language and lemon.
1. The Truth

**Disclaimer**: Don't own _Skip Beat!_, but I do own my very own spirit-grudges and a revenge-fueled scheme to bust into show business! What are the odds, huh?

This chapter is just a touch lime-y, rated for language and suggestiveness. The rating will ramp up as the story goes on. Enjoy!

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><p><strong><em>The Truth (Seeing Red)<br>_**

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><p>"Ready when you are, Yashiro."<p>

"Just a few calls to make, then we'll be off."

His manager stepped out into the LME lobby to make his calls while Ren Tsuruga kicked back in the adjacent lounge, commandeering one of the plush couches off in the corner of the well-furnished room. It had been a trying day for Ren right from the beginning. For one thing, Kyoko Mogami seemed to be acting just a bit more peculiar than usual. A fact which was vaguely terrifying given that there never seemed to be a set standard for "usual" where this particular actress was concerned anyway. For another ...

For another ... ?

_No, wai__t, that's about it, _he thought temperamentally, folding his arms across his chest as he settled deeper into the couch's cushions.

Sometimes it galled him how much she was able to dominate his thoughts with very little discernible effort on her part. His schedule had been booked with interviews, rehearsals and commercials from roughly seven that morning to (he looked down at his wristwatch) half-past eleven that night. He had a new show to prepare for with a director known for changing the blocking every five minutes. And yet the only things that truly stood out in his mind were two run-ins with his lovely kohai.

The first encounter had been in, of all places, the LME food court at about six-fifteen that morning. Her bright hair was swept off to the side, falling rather charmingly over her right eye. She was already dressed for school in her checkered skirt, cotton blouse and a pair of black leggings. A rush of warmth coursed through him at the sight of her slender limb stretching absentmindedly out from under her table, her foot rotating counterclockwise as she worked a kink out of her ankle.

_I guess I don't mind _that_ much._

Why had she been eating in the food court anyway? That in itself had been pretty unusual. She always scorned ready-made dishes and fast food in favor of making her own meals (and anyone else's, for that matter). Yet there she was, hungrily tearing into an enormous breakfast burrito like it was solidified ambrosia. The contented little noises she made in-between bites now played on a constant loop in his head.

"Finally coming over to the dark side of the food pyramid, Mogami-san?" he had joked as he approached her.

She looked up to see who had spoken, her mouth still half-full. Her eyes widened in what he could only assume was surprise as he took the seat across from her. She swallowed the load in her mouth (_Ah, god, **bad** choice of words, don't think of her swallowing, don't think of swallowing_), licked the traces of spicy sauce from her lower lip (_Don't dwell on that, either!_), and then beamed over at him brighter than the sun itself (_Fuck it, if she's happy, I'm happy_).

"Good morning, Tsuruga-san!"

_I wish she'd call me Ren. I should go ahead and tell her it's okay to call me Ren ... More than okay, _he thought resolutely before returning to his review of the day.

"Good mor -" He had ground to a halt when he noticed that one of the hands holding up her burrito was covered in white bandaging from knuckle to wrist.

"_What happened_?"

She jumped at the abrupt shift from congenial to sharp, and he silently cursed himself for a fool before deliberately calming down. "Eh, sorry. I was going for concern there, not ... whatever the hell that was. But seriously, what happened?"

With a rueful smile, she told him: "I got a little too close to the wok while I was doing a stir-fry and got burned."

He had hissed in pained sympathy, shaking his own hand and visibly cringing up at the thought of it. The simple gesture had made her giggle, making his day that much sweeter in the process. _I made her laugh, _he thought with far more pride than he could ever recall spending on things like winning at an award show. _I made her laugh, and I didn't even have to resort to slapstick.  
><em>

"I've never known you to be clumsy in the kitchen, Mogami-san," he had said teasingly. "You slipping up on me?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "I _was_ a bit distracted."

"With what?"

A tinge of pink crept up into her cheeks, and her eyes shifted away from his face. "Um ... you. Actually."

_Steady. Steady._

Before he could ask her to clarify (or finish commanding his heart _not_ to beat straight out of his chest for her see, or thank his lucky stars that Yashiro wasn't around to hear her say that), she rushed on to explain, her blush deepening as she did: "That is, I mean, you were on the TV I was watching when it happened. It was an interview you did promoting your next show. I got kind of caught up watching and didn't pay enough attention."

"Sorry about that," he'd said quietly, watching her intently over his folded hands.

She had looked back with a hint of a smile. "N-no problem."

Silence descended, one that neither of them tried to break. Not an especially _comfortable_ silence, but one that was at least relatively companionable. She held his gaze, and he found himself fascinated by just how opaque that look was, how strangely unreadable her eyes were. She parted her lips, as if to speak, and he had the overwhelming impression that whatever she was going to say would be extraordinary.

"Would you ... ?" She stopped and continued to stare at him, but he got the sense that she wasn't really looking at him anymore. He had seen this look many times before, so much that he could only ever associate it with her exclusively. The look that suggested she was off on another plane of existence entirely, maybe even another galaxy, probably contemplating celestial objects like they were pretty baubles. He smiled slightly, dazzled but somehow unfazed, and just watched her, content to stare back into that beatific face regardless of whether she spoke her piece or not.

"Would you ... ?" she began again.

He had leaned in. She seemed to really be making an effort to spit whatever it was out. "Would I ... ?" he prompted.

Right about this time the oh so sweet-tempered Kotonami-san had barreled in, swooped down on her friend ("Hurry _up_, we've got stuff to do, how are you still eating?") and dragged her off by the elbow with barely a word of salutation thrown his way. He could have sworn she had looked daggers at him out the corner of his eye. _What did I do?_

"Bye, Tsuruga-san, have a good day!" Kyoko had called apologetically over her shoulder before being yanked fully out of sight, half-eaten burrito and all.

"It's Ren," he had said to her empty seat after she had cleared the room. "Call me Ren."

_Like I was never going to see her again, _he thought, still exasperated with the moodiness that had dogged him afterwards. He needn't have worried, as it turned out. Close to the end of his hectic but uneventful day (just under an hour ago), he and Yashiro had made their way to a coffeehouse just a few blocks from Ren's previous engagement. He had downed some tea and was working on his second pastry when Yashiro, who had gone out to the car to recharge his cell phone, came back in looking like a kid on Christmas morning.

"Ren, come look, you've _got_ to see this! They're shooting this commercial up the block and - "

He had grumbled something about a headache he didn't really have and returned to his pastry, most of his mind (that wasn't thinking of where Kyoko was at the moment and what she might be up to) preoccupied with nothing more than going home and climbing into bed. Then Yashiro had leaned down and whispered:

"But don't you want to see Mogami-san?"

In the space of about eight seconds, Ren had dropped his half-eaten treat onto the table (missing the plate entirely), put his coat and hat back on and bolted out into the crisp autumn night, his fatigue chased away by what felt like currents of electricity sprinting through his bloodstream. He had stopped on the street just outside the coffeehouse window and looked back in to see Yashiro grinning smugly out at him, arms folded in implicit victory. When he finally walked out to join him (still grinning, damn him), Ren cleared his throat and said with all the smooth detachment he could muster, "Might as well see that she's not getting into trouble."

Yashiro nodded. "Of course."

"Minding her manners and all that."

"_Mmm-hmm_."

"Because I'm her sempai."

"You are, indeed."

"And I do things like that."

"Frequently."

He groaned. "Yashiro, _stop_. This is hard enough -"

"I'll bet."

His manager smacked a gloved hand over his mouth as the towering actor gave him a death-glare worthy of Lucifer himself. "I didn't mean it like that."

"_I'll bet,_" Ren muttered tartly as they continued up the street to the shooting site. A huge banner reading **"Kyurara"** proclaimed the six blocks roped off, scattered with shooting equipment and crawling with extras, most of whom seemed to be leaving, or in the process of leaving, the set. They found the director chain-smoking near a giant wind machine and made idle chit-chat.

"Oh, yeah, we're just about done here. All we have are a few more close-up shots, then we pack it in."

"You decided to pair the girls together again, eh?" Yashiro observed. "Clever. Good sense of continuity."

"Isn't it? But we're going for a much different concept this time. Instead of having them play in a sunlit field, we have them terrorizing a bunch of pedestrians in the street. They wanted something _edgy_ to go with this supposedly _edgy_ new drink. Like those fuckers know what _edgy_ is - "

"Supposedly?" Yashiro asked. "You haven't even tried it?"

"_Pfft_! That sugary piss-water? Hell no!"

A fair-skinned beauty clad entirely in black stepped out of the trailer parked along the side of the street. She wore a full-body catsuit that didn't even bare her neck, but still managed to give the impression of full-on nudity despite the thickness of the fabric; high-heeled boots that buckled from shin to knee; and a pair of futuristic-looking shades that took up roughly a third of her face. Her long hair, also black, was piled on top of her head in a regal bun encircled by what appeared to be diamonds. Hoisted up onto her shoulder was some sort of hand-held cannon that matched the rest of her outfit and seemed to come straight out of a sci-fi movie.

"Like the look? They each represent a new flavor of the drink." He gestured towards the space-dominatrix, now busily texting on her cell phone. "Kotonami there is 'Blackberry Blast'."

He did a double-take on the woman in black and promptly recognized the vaguely humorless set of her jaw, the proud tilt of her head. She saw him looking and lifted a hand in greeting that wasn't flying over the keypad of her cell. _**That's** Kotonami?_

"Chiori's flavor is 'Lemon Lightning'. And Mogami is 'Cherry Crush'." He rolled his eyes at the indignity of having to speak these names aloud.

The door to the trailer had sprang open again. Out hopped Amamiya Chiori, clad in a blindingly yellow cloak that fell to her platform heels and a platinum blonde wig of bouncing sausage curls that spiraled all the way down her back. She was currently gushing over a certain someone who hadn't yet crossed the door's threshold.

"I'm telling you, it's _fine_. You're like an illustration from a mythology book come to life!" she squealed happily.

"That's ... good, right? You're sure I'm wearing it right? It looks okay?"

"_Freaking fantastic_," Kotonami barked without looking up from her phone, "now get out here so we can wrap this up and go home. These stupid boots are killing me!"

Kyoko finally emerged in full Cherry Crush regalia, rendering all of Ren's attempts at thought entirely impossible save for one: _"Okay" doesn't come_ _close_.

Befitting her title, every clothed inch of her was indeed the Technicolor red of a maraschino cherry.

_Breathe. Just breathe._

Her feet were wrapped in Grecian sandals with crisscrossing straps traveling up her bare calves. Slouchy harem pants were pegged tight just below her knees and slung low across the gentle curve of her hips; they were a touch sheer, subtly hinting at the outline of her thighs without actually revealing them. A ruched bustier baring most of her taut stomach clung tight to her breasts, cradling and lifting them the way Ren himself often did in his dreams at night when she was naked and wet and unable and unwilling to escape the weight of him pressing down on her.

_**Breathe**, goddammit._

A garnet choker circled her throat. Ropes of the fiery gem twined around her otherwise bare waist and spiraled down her arms, caught by metallic cuffs around her biceps and wrists. Her hair, temporarily dyed in the exact shade as the rest of her ensemble and lengthened by expertly applied extensions, was tightly braided up high into a whip-like tail that trailed along the side of her head and came to rest on her left shoulder like a pet snake. Her hands were fitted with leather gloves, cleverly disguising the bandages on her injury. She stood with one hip cocked and her head held high, her stance languid but alert and entirely dangerous nonetheless. Clutched in her left hand was a war hammer as tall as she was and, of course, the same saturated color. Over her arm was a wide bolt of satin which she proceeded to drape over her shoulders like a shawl, effectively covering this brief glimpse of paradise without pulling its visceral punch in the slightest.

Yashiro, aghast, vocalized Ren's initial thought: "_Good lord_."

"On a pogo stick," Ren added quietly, grateful that he was still capable of forming whole (albeit nonsensical) words and not just caveman grunts or drooling, slack-jawed yammering.

The director chuckled at their reaction and called out: "OI! Cherry and Lemon! You got visitors!"

They looked over at the pair of them still gawking. Kyoko smiled wide and waved at them, utterly destroying her display of intimidating aloofness. She and Amamiya strode over to where Kotonami was still obliviously fiddling with her phone, heedless of what a striking trio they made at that moment. She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her friends and raised the prop-hammer high above her head.

"Bow down before the embodiments of flavor, puny mortals, and drink of our divinity!" she called out in a voice more suited to an MST3K-esque version of Thor than whatever ancient goddess she had been channeling a second ago. Everyone within earshot had burst into laughter at her hammy proclamation (except Kotonami, who somehow managed to give the distinct impression that she was rolling her eyes, despite the impenetrable shades). The three girls came over and bowed in greeting.

"Oookay," Yashiro said, looking from one girl to the other, "I get the 'Blast' and the 'Crush', because of the gun and the hammer. Chiori-san, where's _your_ weapon?"

She giggled and lifted an index finger to the sky. "That would be the magic of Special Effects. I'm supposed to wave my arms and pretend to shoot yellow lightning from my fingertips."

"Oh, I see!"

"What brings you two here?" Kyoko asked brightly, her chipper attentiveness clashing perfectly with her heightened physicality.

Yashiro, wisely jumping in to answer the question (as Ren was still bowled over by this latest demonstration of Kyoko's shape-shifting power), told her they had been having dinner up the street, then wandered over to see what all the fuss was about. "We didn't expect to find you all here. Though we're happy we did! Aren't we, Ren?"

He nodded stiffly with a ghost of a smile. "Yes. Very happy."_ Take me. Take me now, I'm yours - FOCUS.  
><em>

She leaned around them and looked up the street, scanning the various storefronts in the direction Yashiro had indicated that they had come from. Her kohl-rimmed eyes zeroed back in on Ren and narrowed accusingly, sending a familiar jolt up his spine. "You went to that coffeehouse, didn't you? The one that does those god-awful _pastries_?" She spat the word like an obscenity.

"How'd you know?"

She gave him a triumphant smirk. "Aha! _I didn't_."

"Well-played, madam," he conceded with a nod, trying (and probably failing) not to relish their banter too openly, "but are you really still allowed to lecture _me_ on nutrition after what I witnessed this morning?"

"Eh?"

"That poor burrito ... you didn't give it a chance. Seems like you don't mind a bit of unhealthy indulgence every now and again."

"The key words there are '_every now and again_'. And you should do as I say, not as I do!" she replied sternly with a finger-wagging gesture that _might_ have been convincingly maternal if not for her costume.

"And _you_," she added, turning back to Yashiro, who jumped guiltily, "should make sure he eats right. You're his manager, after all!"

"Yes, of course, you're absolutely right!" He raised his hand to his forehead in salute.

Ren rolled his eyes. "Can't really disagree with someone wielding a giant hammer, can you?"

She looked contemplative, even downright philosophical. "That's kind of a barbaric notion of power, though, isn't it? Lots of people command authority without of a giant hammer. _You_ seem to get along just fine without one."

_It's a perfectly adequate-sized ha ... WAIT, WHAT THE -_

Kotonami snorted inelegantly, nearly dropping her phone. Kyoko didn't notice.

"Unless you've got one tucked away somewhere that I don't know about - "

Amamiya squeezed her mouth shut, shaking with silent chortles. Kyoko, now working up to a genuine tangent, didn't notice this either.

" - in which case I'd have to wonder where you'd be hiding it ... Uh, you guys?"

Kyoko looked from one girl to the other, baffled by their reaction and unaware of the very phallic implications of what she'd just said.

"Why, Kyoko-chan, I'm surprised at you," Amamiya said with a grin that seemed to hold all the mischief in the world. "Don't you keep up with the tabloids? They're always speculating about the size of Tsuruga-san's hammer!"

"Huh?"

Ren twitched at the look of skepticism that came across Kyoko's face. _Oh, don't. Please, don't go where I think you're going -_

"_Hah_! How naive do I look? I'll believe it when I see it!" Then she stared up at him. Expectantly.

_... Fuck my life. _

Yashiro began to cough loudly and unconvincingly into the crook of his arm, trying to hide his shocked laugh. Ren simply stared down at her, eyes narrowed inquisitively, beginning to wonder if maybe, _just maybe_, she was torturing him on purpose, but on a purely unconscious level. How else could she say these things yet retain such a degree of innocent naivete too real to feign? She looked from Kotonami, to Yashiro, to Amamiya and back again, the very picture of artless bewilderment.

He shook his head incredulously._ Bless your heart, you wayward siren._

"_What_? What are you guys la - ?"

He felt his lips twitch into an involuntary half-smile as he saw the horrified understanding in her widening eyes, the accidental innuendos finally dawning on her. She flushed as red as her costume from hairline to neck, and even Ren couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for her (despite the very evil part of him that gloried in that wonderfully undone look on her face).

"_Oh_ ... oh my god, _no_! Th-that's not what I was - I wasn't trying to ... _Shut **up**, you guys_!" she wailed, stamping her feet petulantly as the two girls began to roar in earnest, Amamiya doubling over at the waist and Kotonami gnawing on her gloved knuckles in a desperate bid for self-control.

She looked back up at Ren and proceeded to make the awkward situation even more so in the most painfully adorable way possible: by trying to explain.

"I swear to god that's not what I meant! I wasn't referring to your ... um ... y-your ..." She seemed to be mentally scouring her vocabulary for a word that was actually appropriate, her unoccupied hand moving in a twitchy windshield wiper motion. His smile widened a tad, and his gut clenched with suppressed laughter. _Oh, this ought to be good_. He folded his arms, waiting. Unfortunately, she was beaten to the punch when a grinning, red-faced Chiori chimed in:

"... hardware?"

Kyoko gasped, sending the newest LoveMe member into deeper hysterics. It took all of Ren's accumulated acting experience not to crack up at the combined hilarity of Chiori's (heretofore unbeknownst) audacity and Kyoko's appalled expression.

"_Mo_!" Kotonami interjected. "That was _entirely_ wrong of you, Chiori!"

Kyoko nodded vigorously. "Yes! Yes, it wa - !"

A pained but impish grin that shaved years off of her stern countenance broke through Kotonami's mask of dignified outrage. "The proper term is '_equipment_'!" she said from behind her balled fist before launching into another gale of laughter.

"_Moko-saaaan, how could you?_"

She turned back to Ren, who by that point had decided not to speak at all (he didn't trust himself not to toss out a few inspired euphemisms of his own). Instead, he pulled his hat even lower over his eyes, wishing he could just disappear and take her with him.

"Tsuruga-san, don't listen to them, I _swear_, I wasn't m-making assumptions about, um ... _you_. I-I-I mean, I'm sure you're _nice_ or whatever, b-but - _OH, GOD DAMN IT!_" She stormed off, hammer and all, leaving in her wake two thoroughly scandalized men and two howling, teary-eyed girls.

"Well, that was fun," he had said once the harpies had regained their senses and split to hunt down their embarrassed friend. "Can we leave before something else absolutely ridiculous happens?"

"You didn't seem to mind," Yashiro said with a grin. Ren chuckled, silently cursing his manager's perceptiveness. He hated to admit it, but it was true: He would have loved nothing more than to sit back and watch her squirm. Though he would have preferred that not happen in such a public setting. Had they been alone they could have discussed just how _... nice_ he was to her heart's content. Perhaps he would have afforded her a demonstration ...

He shook his head, trying to clear it of the improper scenario forming in his mind._ You're a sick man, Kuon._

He returned to the present, to his spot on the couch. _Please let this day end already, _he prayed wearily, _let me go home to my dreams.  
><em>

The inescapable afterimage of Kyoko's Cherry Crush persona reasserted itself at the mention of dreams. He groaned inwardly. On second thought, maybe he shouldn't be so eager to abandon himself to his dreams tonight. Not with that crimson figure still fresh in his mind, or the equally searing memory of that faraway look from this morning. There was no telling what his subconscious might get up to, what with all the day's events conspiring to unravel his self-control.

"Ready, Ren?"

He eased himself off of the couch with a grunt. "Yep."

They started off down the hallway leading out to the parking lot, passing none other than the LoveMe locker room as they did. He heard the two of them talking as they passed the doorway of their locker room. He slowed down about halfway down the hall and, against his better judgement, turned back to see if maybe they wanted a ride home, leaving Yashiro close to the exit with a huge grin. As he got closer, snippets of their conversation slipped through the partially open door.

"I can't believe Chiori led me into that trap ... Tabloids, indeed!"

He bit down on his tongue instinctively to keep from laughing. Kotonami fired back: "Well, if you weren't so damn _literal_ all the time, then maybe you wouldn't have walked right into it!"

"Ugh, I'd like to be able to talk to my sempai without blurting out stuff like ..." This statement ended on a vaguely seasick groan. "Christ, he must think I'm such a pervert now. I'll never be able to face him again."

Ren lifted his hand to knock on the door, hating the mischievous little streak in him that dearly wanted to see how he'd react to his intrusion.

"I'm surprised you faced him as well as you did today, given that crap you fed him about ... what was it again?"

"A burn in the kitchen."

His hand froze mid-knock. _Hello_.

"And he _bought_ it?"

Kyoko's voice, fraught with weariness: "I can never tell with him ... but he doesn't seem suspicious, so ..."

"This is going to backfire, I just know it. Quit being such a wuss, and tell him the truth. You know he's going to find out eventually!"

_Maybe sooner than she thinks_, he thought.

"And he'll be mad as hell if he finds out you lied."

_Right again, Kotonami._

"Stop _saying_ that, you'll jinx it! I'll deal with him eventually, but there's no reason for him to ever know about last night!"

The older girl scoffed. "Your hand says otherwise!"

_What on earth ... ? _

"It'll be gone soon," Kyoko replied, "in a few days it'll be gone, it's not permanent."

"Oh, it'll go away, all right, but the truth won't. Because you _know_ now - "

"I don't _know_ anything," she retorted with a sharpness he wouldn't have expected, "other than that Kyoichi's _never_ coming out with us again. _This is all his fault_ - "

The sound of another man's name - another man's _given_ name, no less - in connection with Kyoko's bandaged hand was a carnival mallet, smashing some internal Pandora's box of unsavory possibilities. They flooded his mind like howling wraiths, drowning out the girls' conversation as his pulse began to pound in his ears. Before he could even stop to think about it, he unceremoniously pushed open the door and stepped through it.

Both girls were dressed casually, their blinding pink jumpsuits long since folded and put out of sight. Kotonami stood leaning against the lockers, arms folded across her stomach and one foot kicked up behind her. Her casual stance didn't change, but her eyes grew wide as saucers at the sight of him. Kyoko sat across from her on one of the benches, hands folded in her lap, with a heavy beige tote by her side. Her hair was slicked back from her face, now devoid of the subtle concealer he hadn't noticed this morning, and caught with a cloth headband. A dark, oblong bruise stood out against the increasing paleness of her right temple.

"Tsu ... Tsu ... ruga-san. Hello." She gave him a smile so forced and anxiety-ridden he immediately wanted to kick himself for barging in the way he had. He realized that his stance was more threatening than protective, that he looked ready to hurt _her_ rather than track down the man who did and tear him to pieces.

_She needs your help, idiot!__ Stop scowling and put her at_ _ease_. So he made himself relax. He unclenched his fists and stuck his hands in his pocket.

And he smiled back._  
><em>

_**. . . . .**_

The smile that suddenly blossomed on that legendarily handsome face was like liquid nitrogen, cold enough to burn and sear and tear like the depths of Hell itself. The icy blast from those curving lips set her insides roiling, whipping her spirit-grudges into a frenzy that threatened to split her flesh apart.

_FFFFFFFFUCK, HOW MUCH DID HE HEAR, OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK -  
><em>

Kyoko was far more acquainted with this smile than she wanted to be and as such could read it with frightening clarity. It was the smile of a public manipulator, a mad magician who had the whole world thinking the trick was real and everything real was a trick. The smile that was pure, glittery surface and yet indicative of so much dark potential as to boggle the mind. The smile of a cunning sociopath who knows that a _real_ smile, a _genuine_ smile is supposed to reach the eyes and thus goes out of their way to compensate for the fact that theirs are devoid of any real warmth by scrunching them up until they seem almost entirely shut. A smile so fake it made plastic seem biodegradable by comparison.

To say that she feared this smile would be so much of an understatement as to miss the point entirely. The point being: _To my beloved Taisho I bequeath ... Oh, christ, I have nothing to bequeath to anyone, just a few thousand yen in the bank and my Corn stone and my voodoo dolls, I'm going to die right this minute with nothing to leave behind in my will!_

"Hello again, Kotonami-san," her executioner said smoothly. "I wonder if I could borrow Mogami-san from you?"

_I have some these lovely new torture devices I'd like to try on her, _that smile seemed to say.

Kanae didn't move to leave. She gave him a long look, her chin lifted in silent appraisal. Then she nodded slowly, more to herself than to Tsuruga-san, as if in understanding. What she understood in that moment, Kyoko wasn't even remotely sure, but she had the distinct impression that Tsuruga-san had just passed some sort of test. He seemed to be aware of this, too, because that awful smile dropped out of sight almost as soon as it had appeared and he returned Kanae's look with ... Was it some kind of ... gratitude? Could that be it? Why on earth would she thinks so?

Kyoko watched in horror as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder, clapped her on the shoulder and headed for the door. The man stepped aside to let her pass, never once taking his eyes off of Kyoko. Though the gentlemanly smile didn't return to his face, the aura around him was still too dark, the crackle between them cranked too high for her to feel entirely at ease. She looked down at her hands, frantically twisting in her lap. _But Moko-san wouldn't have left if she thought I couldn't handle this, would she?  
><em>

The silence between them stretched on like a piece of taffy. She bit into it like a bullet and hazarded a question without looking up: "Is there something ... I can do for you? Tsuruga-san?"

"Actually, I wanted to do something for _you_. A favor, really."

_Oh, joy, maybe I get to PICK my method of execution? _"That's ... nice of you. Wh-what favor is that?"

He walked over to where she sat stone-still on the bench, moving with sinister grace and quiet intent. She turned her head towards him as he approached. He leaned down to her. She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes, so she stared at the bit of skin visible between the silver chain around his neck and the V-shaped collar of his blue shirt. He whispered:

"I'm going to give you a ride home." Neither a question nor a request, merely a statement of fact.

Eyes still trained on the chain around his neck, she immediately reached over and pulled her bag closer, preparing to leave. At his command, of course.

"Th-thank you, Tsuruga-san."

He leaned even closer, fully engulfing her in his shadow and the subtle spice of his cologne. She found herself breathing deep, taking in as much of that clean, heady scent as she could get without leaning in to smell him. The fact that she very much wanted to, especially at a time like this, was beyond confusing. That her mind was muddled enough at that moment to consider asking him outright what brand of fragrance he used was nothing short of alarming. The heat rolling off of him was like an aura all its own, a moving force that was strangely comforting, entirely separate from the darkness she sensed in him.

_Keep it together. Keep it -_

"And on the way ... You can tell me all about this ... _Kyoichi_ ..." He spat the name like it was grime on his tongue, unfit to grace his lips.

Her eyes widened. The spell of his overwhelming physical presence broke just enough to allow the panic she'd kept at bay to reassert itself. She finally lifted her gaze to meet his and found herself staring down the dissonant tranquility of a demon lord. She quailed under the sheer weight of his charged but eerily neutral scrutiny. He was too close, entirely too close.

"... what he did to your hand ..."

_Oh, no.  
><em>

"... and where I can find him ..."

_NO.  
><em>

"... so I can beat the everliving shit out of him."

* * *

><p>(Anyone else think I ran a bit too far with that hammer gag? I understand American and Japanese humor innuendo tend to differ, but I'm a silly Texan and I just couldn't resist!)

Till next time, folks! Review the hell outta me and gimme your guesses as to what's going on, I want to see how close you guys get to The Truth. (And, NO, the one with the best guest will not get a prize beyond the satisfaction of unraveling my plot, so don't ask for one!)


	2. The Whole Truth

**Disclaimer**: Stiiiiiiill don't own _Skip Beat!_

_AN: Just to be clear, Kyoko has recently turned eighteen, still in school but very close to graduation (given how late she started high school)._ I'm saying this here because I don't want to try and clumsily shoehorn the information into the story, though it will definitely be touched on at some point in the next two chapters.

In which there is impromptu night on the town!

(And the genre shifts a smidgen towards Drama, though I've tried to keep the Humor intact.)

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><p><strong><em>The Whole Truth (Black Knight)<br>_**

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><p>Ren's threat seemed to reverberate through the silent locker room. As though he had yelled it rather than whispering the words with special care to provide little to no emphasis. To simply <em>say<em> the words and not endow them with the full force of his protective fury. His fingers rubbed together as a telltale itch took hold of them; whether to pummel the miscreant or to caress the frozen young woman in front of him, he wasn't entirely sure.

She returned his stare with the same celestial look from that morning, but with a definite twist: She could see him this time. Of _that_ much he was certain. Her eyes bored into his with such otherworldly deliberation that he found himself wondering if she was weighing his very soul in that moment, totaling up his worthiness for whatever task lay ahead of him. It was more than a little unsettling. What could she be seeing in him right then?

She exhaled audibly, the tingle of her breath across his chin sending an answering twinge straight out to his fingertips. It was nothing so pronounced as a sigh, yet it carried the same implication: a held breath released, a pressure valve following suit. She nodded with a dreamlike slowness, her focus gradually turning from the discreet plane to the physical. A sense of resolve settled over her as her gaze shifted away from his face. The decision - whatever it was - had been made, and he was able to breath again.

_Note to self, no more staring contests with this woman ever in a million__ ... What are you doing?_

She reached up and slowly pulled the cloth band off of her head. She shook her hair loose so that it fell around her face and into her eyes, once again hiding the bruise on her temple. Her knees parted, feet still together; her torso sloped forward, shoulders hunched, elbows braced on her spread thighs. She began to sway, rocking almost imperceptibly from side to side. He took a half-step back and looked her over, fascinated despite himself at the deliberate shift in her body language.

_What in the world - ?_

Her voice was curiously flat, drained of all inflection save for a distinct note of hesitancy: "You want to meet Kyoichi, Tsuruga-san?"

He blinked and attempted to resume an air of composure in the face of Kyoko's unusual behavior, fighting back the impulse to ask if she was alright. _Ride it out, _he commanded himself. _Go with it._

"I thought I had made that abundantly clear," he said, despising the frigid tone of his voice. "But for the sake of clarification, _yes_. I want to meet him."

She rolled her head to one side and looked back up at him through her bangs. Her eyelids drooped as a hard glint came into those honey-gold eyes. A roguish smile parted her lips, baring her teeth like those of a wolf. A harsh but mirthful sound emerged from that bewitching mouth, a laugh that was somewhere between a high wheeze and a rasping cough. She thrust her chin forward, her lower lip curled contemptuously. When she spoke again, it was in a low growl of a voice, with a rough accent he identified as an English-American hyrid:

**"Look no further, stud. Ya fount 'im."_  
><em>**

..._ What.__*_

Almost as soon as it appeared, whatever possessed her vanished completely, leaving her visibly shaken and almost nauseous-looking as she resumed her former posture. Without so much as looking at him, she reached into her beige tote, extracted a stack of papers and handed it to him. Ren, still stunned, took it without thinking and nearly dropped it out of sheer surprise when he realized that it was a script. He looked back at Kyoko to find her rapidly blinking away the tears suddenly gleaming in her averted eyes.

"_I_ am Kyoichi."

An audible thud drew her gaze back to him as he dropped down onto the bench across from her.

"And _I_," he managed to quip through his daze, "am lost. Explain. Please."

She took a deep breath and started at the beginning, her delivery fraught with resignation.

"Moko-san's going for a role in a stage play. As a lawyer named Raine who comes from a criminal family and maintains his loyalties to them. I told her a bit about my time as Kuon a while back, so she figured I could help her adjust to playing a male part. Sh-she's ... she's never _asked_ me for help like that before," she said with eyes like hunted prey, "not with acting. I couldn't let her down! So when she suggested that I rehearse opposite her ... as Raine's brother ..."

"_Kyoichi_, I presume?"

She nodded. "She figured we would kill two birds with one stone. She could gauge my method of adapting to male mannerisms and behavior. And see how she much she could differentiate Raine from Kyoichi while still making their status as brothers convincing."

_No such thing as "too prepared", I suppose. _"But then why speak of him ..."

"As though he were an actual, separate person?" she finished quietly with the vaguest hint of a self-deprecating smile. "I have a tendency to do that, don't I?"

He arched his brow. "Point taken. But why blame a character for your injury? And why lie about it to _me_ specifically?"

Kyoko ducked her head low. "Last night ... I did something unforgivable. Even more so than lying to you. Naturally, I wouldn't want you to find out ... "

He softened his tone in understanding that was only partially feigned. "You thought I would disapprove. And you didn't want my opinion of you to change, is that it?"

"Y-yes, exactly, I - !"

She looked up and stuttered to a halt at the hawk-like vigilance with which he watched her. He hadn't failed to notice how eagerly she grasped at his offered excuse. Her teeth guiltily bit into her lower lip.

"Then why does Kotonami think I _should_ know?" he pressed. "She seemed pretty insistent that you tell me."

She bit down even harder and shut her eyes, effectively blocking him out. When she still wouldn't answer, he stood up and sat down next to her. She flinched, but didn't pull away.

"Don't you know by now that you can trust me? What is it that you don't want me to know?" he asked softly. "Am I tied to this in some way that I'm not aware of?"

Her eyes sprang back open. Color flooded back into her pale face until her cheeks were a shade between rose and tomato.

"N ... no! I mean, I wouldn't _say_ - but then you _were_ - Oh, god, this is too complicated!" Her head dropped back down, her face buried in her hands. "Okay ... okay. Do you remember this morning ... when I told you I saw your interview the other night?"

"When you were whipping up that delicious stir-fry, you mean? Yes. I remember." She winced at the bitter sarcasm in his voice, but carried on.

"Well ... during the actual incident in question, you _were_ on the TV ..."

He leaned in, expecting more to follow. Silence descended as nothing more seemed to be forthcoming. His patience hanging by a tattered thread, Ren raked a hand through his hair and wondered how a real interrogator would fare against the evasive likes of Kyoko Mogami. "And I'm _just_ as flattered as I was this morning that you noticed, but what does that have to do with anything?

Her eyes darted to his, fastened hard and steady. "More than I care to admit."

The look on her face was the visual equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. _Turn back while you can_, it muttered darkly. _We **don't** have to do this._ He turned to face her fully, crossing his legs Indian-style on the bench and folding his arms across his chest. _I am a mountain_, replied this pose. _I will not be moved_. Taking the hint, she closed her eyes again and kept going, massaging the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb.

"We wanted to see ... if we could fool everybody. If we could make our roles as men convincing enough. So we went out. In character. To a b-bar ..." Her lips trembled. "We had a few too many -"

"_OF COURSE!_"

Kyoko jumped nearly a foot in the air as his shout echoed around them.

"E-excuse me?"

Aware even as he said the words that they may well be the stupidest things to leave his mouth thus far, Ren declared excitedly: "I was wondering why you were eating something so unlike what you usually do, and that explains it! It was _hangover food_!"

Kyoko stared at him with narrowed eyes and a deep frown. For one glorious moment she seemed to forget entirely that he was her esteemed sempai (something he had been trying to get her to do for ages) and just looked at him as though he had lost his mind (_not _a desired effect, but still refreshingly novel given the almost maddening degree of decorum with which she usually treated him). So despite his embarrassment, he was unaccountably delighted by what she said next:

"I just admit to drinking, two years shy of being legal to do so, and all you're concerned about is _what I ate the next morning_?"

His lips twitched. That was far from his only concern, but he wouldn't waste this opportunity, so he said, "Yes."

"_ ... Seriously_?"

"Yes, _seriously_!" he retorted with mock-insult, intentionally shading off into a melodramatic tone that they both recognized as Lory Takarada's. "My personal nutritionist going rogue on me like that? It was quite traumatizing. I thought of nothing else all day!"

The lower half of her face bunched and contorted in an obvious effort to suppress a laugh that crept out anyway, and his heart sang at the sound of it. She shook her head at his silliness, still nervous, but obviously not as much as a moment ago. The tension didn't entirely leave the room, but at least they could breathe again. That was something.

"You're not ... mad that I got drunk?"

_Holy god, woman, I'm not your father!__**_ he thought miserably.

"If I were to get mad at you for that, I'd be the biggest hypocrite ever," he said dryly, "given how many times _I've_ overdone it, even before I was of age."

Her eyes widened in genuine disbelief. "You?"

"Yes, I was quite the deliquent. Trust me, if I ever start preaching temperance, you're well within your rights to cry foul."

"Ah." She nodded, clearly mystified by this turn in the conversation, but willing to go with it. "I'll have to remember that."

He cleared his throat. "Keep going," he said pointedly, "so you had too much to drink and then what?"

"I ... I can't. I can't tell you."

He sighed. "Even if I promise not to judge? Not to get mad?"

"You can't promise something like that without knowing what I've done. And I assure you," she said grimly, "you _will_ judge and you _will_ be mad. And you'll have every right to do so."

_Don't be so sure, _Ren almost said aloud.

"But ... maybe _he _can tell you."

He blinked. "I'm sorry?"

Once again only semi-aware of him, Kyoko began to nod to herself. "Yes._ He'll_ tell you the truth. The whole truth."

She didn't say the words _Whether I want him to or not. _The bitterly resigned look on her face said it for her.

He grasped the plan already formed in her head even before she reached back into her bag and pulled out a black hat. _Guess I get to meet this "Kyoichi", after all._

_**. . . . .**_

Having been left to hover by the LME exit for a good fifteen minutes, Yukihito Yashiro began to suspect that he had been ditched. He retraced Ren's steps and found the younger man standing directly across from the closed locker room door, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pocket.

"Where on earth have you been? I've been waiting at the ... Ren? _Ren_? Did you ask them or not?"

The actor gave a start. "Them ... ? Oh, you mean Kotonami. She left a while ago."

"What about Mogami-san?"

"She's getting dressed."

"Oh ... Wait, w_hat_? How do you - ?"

The door across from them opened. A slender young man stepped out, dressed mostly in black, from his corduroy slacks to his high-collared jacket to the cap pulled low over his slicked-back, yellow-orange hair. Yashiro began to panic immediately, not noticing that Ren didn't show so much as an ounce of surprise at the stranger's sudden appearance. _What is he doing in the girl's lock - !_

The young man pulled the brim of his cap up to reveal Kyoko Mogami's eyes. A blinding flash of deja vu struck Yashiro in that moment, bringing back the last time she had greeted the two of them in male drag. He looked up at Ren, who looked back with a nod: He had been expecting this. "Just go with it," he said before turning his gaze back to the man ... _girl_ in front of them.

It went without saying that this wiry urchin was a world away from the exuberant gentle Kuon Hizuri.

Her sleeves were pushed up to the elbow and her coat opened to reveal a white shirt; her breasts were quite obviously bound flat. Her stance was that of a gunslinger at ease: hands thrust deep into her pockets, feet planted wide and hips tilted forward. On her feet were a pair of heavily scuffed high-tops tied with tattered laces. A light stubble shadowed her jaw. Deep bags under her eyes bespoke of late nights and excess.

It struck them both that she looked, in short, like a thug. And if the implicit challenge in that humorless smirk on her face was any indication, she had more than a thug's look.

She looked Yashiro over briefly, noting his prescence, then shifted his ... _her _gaze to Ren.

"The man, the myth, the legend," she quipped. Her voice wasn't pitched especially low, but was rough and somehow breathy at the same time. She gave Ren one more quick onceover and then began to walk away, striding without so much as a backwards glance for the exit.

Abandoning his casual stance against the wall, Ren pealed off after her. "Where are you going?"

The vagabond looked back at him, all wary speculation. "What, you wanna fight _here_? This your place of business, ain't it? Ya didn't strike as the type to piss where ya live, mate."

"Fight?"

"Oi! You _did_ say you were gonna beat the crap outta me, yes?"

Yashiro's jaw dropped, but Ren only chuckled. "Considering that you're sharing a body with my kohai, I'm going to have to retract that statement. There will be no fight."

The ragamuffin's brow arched. Then his - _her!_ - face broke into a wide, fox-like grin. She laughed loud and long, the racuous sound echoing in the hallway.

_A smoker's laugh_, Yashiro realized, noting the wheezing rasp coming from the back of the throat. _Too convincing!_

"Can't say I don't like the sound o' that! Say, man," she address Yashiro with a jerk of her head towards Ren as the three of them began to make for the exit. "You ever see this kid fight?"

Ren blinked_. Kid? _

"Ah, n-no," his manager replied, still visibly dazed. "I haven't."

This answer sent her - _him?_ - into a kind of whooping jeer. "Man, oh man, but that was something to see! You shoulda seen him take out that seaweed-headed motherfu -"

"It wasn't _that_ impressive," Ren interjected loudly, remembering the incident Kyoichi - _Kyoko? -_ was referring to and having no desire to rehash his time as Cain Heel, "but thanks. I guess."

"Bah! I've gone hand to hand enough to know your skill's nothin' to sneeze at. Save that bashful rot for the girls, Emperor!"

_Emperor__? _Yashiro wondered at this peculiar title. _That's not an English expression, like 'bloke'. Why would she - **he** call him that?_

He looked at Ren to find his brow furrowed in clear inquiry. _Guess I'm not the only one who's lost.  
><em>

They made it to the parking lot. "Nice ride," Kyoichi remarked before getting into the back seat.

They proceeded to roam the streets. At least it seemed to the actor and his manager that they roamed. Kyo ... _ichi_ seemed to have a destination in mind ("This next left"), though she ... _he_ wouldn't say where exactly the three of them were going. ("You'll see when we _get _there, fer crissakes, just _drive_!")

Along the way, the two of them tentatively asked of his background. He gave bits and pieces of his life story, sketching a colorful sojourn between the U.K. (where he'd spent most of his youth), the States (where he had served time in jail for offenses not specified) and Japan, his birthplace and preferred dwelling above most others. He was coy to the point of cagey when asked how he made a living. His accent receded and returned like tides in the moon's sway, becoming thicker whenever something aroused his anger or interest and mellowing as he did until it was almost genteel. He was prone to reaching out from the back seat to fiddle with the radio during the course of the conversation.

This amused Yashiro to no end as Ren's face each time the limber androgyne stretched past him was priceless.

"Here." The hoodlum was out of the car almost before Ren had finished parking in the lot of a building he realized was a rundown _izakaya. _

Yashiro stood by the passenger side door, not moving so much as an inch in Kyoichi's direction. "Ren? You don't suppose this all an elaborate scheme to get you to eat, do you?"

The actor's eyes widened comically. "There's elaborate and then there's diabolical. I don't think she'd go quite _this_ far ..."

"You don't sound so sure."

"I'm ... I'm not," the actor admitted with a kind of giddy misery that troubled his manager, "I'm really not. I'm never sure of anything where this girl's concerned. She'll be the death of me, I just know i -"

"You comin' or what?" their guest yelled from the doorway of the restaurant. "I ain't snitchin' on an empty stomach, you can make up your mind to that!"

The two men joined him and entered the restaurant. They commandeered a table in the back corner of the main dining room and continued to chat while waiting to be served.

A cheongasm-clad waitress came up to take their order, but then zeroed in on Kyoichi almost immediately. Her eyes widened, then narrowed to brown slits. Her hands settled on her hips. "You, again?"

"Miss me?" the ragamuffin greeted with a lift of his chin.

"Hardly," the lady retorted, "not after all that fuss you made last night."

"Worried about me, eh?" Kyoichi smirked, cocky but deliberately charming. "I had hoped you would be."

Ren's hackles rose at the suave tone in his kohai's voice._ Sweet christ, is she ... flirting? _

The woman's lips twitched into an involuntary grin, won over despite herself. "In your dreams, _mongrel_!"

"Where we first met, if I'm not mistaken," Kyoichi replied smoothly, that vulpine grin widening until it teetered on the brink of indecency.

The delinquent's golden eyes grew soft but devouring, roving over the waitress with an abandon that made Yashiro blush and Ren seize up internally, despite the fact that neither was the object of this lascivious attention. The waitress didn't fail to notice this appraisal, and despite her sardonic reproach, a very distinct sizzle passed between the two of them.

Yashiro looked over at Ren to find him looking right back at him, just as taken aback by this behavior as he was. They listened to the criminal and the waitress volley back and forth as though they weren't even there, trading come-ons and rebuffs with equally cryptic fervor until, blushing profusely, she remembered that she had a job to do and pulled her notebook and pen out from her apron pocket.

She took their orders: tea for Ren ("No, I ate earlier, thanks"), sake for Yashiro (_Christ, I need a drink_, _this is **too** surreal_) and a bowl of soba noodles for Kyoichi ("Neither of ya try askin' to share, I'm hungry as hell!").

"So this is where it happened?" Ren asked once the waitress had left them.

"Yep." He pointed to the ceiling. "Bar's upstairs. Wouldn't chance it if I were you, they've got nothing but swill on tap around here. Noodles are always good though."

"Whoa, whoa, _whoa_," Yashiro cut in, struggling to keep up. "You were _drinking?_"

"The fuck _else_ do ya do in a pub? Heh. Apart from the obvious, eh, buddy? Huh? _Huh_?" he said with that toothy grin, nudging Ren in the arm with his - _her!_ - elbow and jerking his head towards one of the passing waitresses. Ren nodded gamely (if a bit bemusedly), earning himself another wheezing cough of a laugh and a brotherly slap on the shoulder.

Yashiro gulped down some more of his sake. _Too. Surreal._

The waitress returned to the table and set down a huge bowl belching steam into the air, pointedly ignoring the rapt attention Kyoichi paid her. Once she was gone, he picked up the bowl and proceeded to drink down the beef broth in thirsty gulps, exposing the noodles, eggs and herbs to the open air. He looked up, suddenly aware of the stares they were giving him, and pulled the bowl closer to his bound chest in a gesture that clearly said _Get your own!_

He held up the bandaged hand. "Suppose you'll be wantin' to know about this, then?"

"And that," Ren said, gesturing towards the bruise hidden under the tilted cap.

"Eh? Oh, no, Emperor, there's no story behind that little bump. Heh. Beyond the fact that being drunk and in the dark doesn't do much to fend off doorframes." He shook his head at his own folly and dug into his bowl.

_Again with this Emperor nonsense? _"Duly noted. Now start talking."

He shrugged. "Things started out well enough. Rae and I are pretty faded, having some laughs and catchin' up. Then this absolute _gobshite_ down the way launches into a rant about queers. Feckin' _queers_, of all things! The joints crawlin' with women, and all he's got on his mind is queers! Methinks he was protesting too much, if ya catch my drift, but whatever. And - here's the kicker - you know what set him off? Do ya? _This guy_."

She pointed at Ren.

"Excuse me?"

Kyoichi waved off the oncoming protest that wasn't really oncoming at all and continued to explain: "Now keep in mind, the twat's pretty well tanked at this point, so he'd been latching onto whatever was comin' up on the telly over the bar, right? It was funny for a while. Then he started in on _you_ when your interview came up and ... she didn't like it." A shadow passed over the young man's face as though were reliving something ghastly. He shuddered. "No, I'd say she didn't like that at all."

"She ... ? You mean ... Mogami-san?"

"That'd be the one," Kyoichi said archly. "Now, if I had to guess, it wasn't the queer thing that got her steamed up. She didn't seem to mind that so much. Matter fact, she did dwell on that fer a bit, tryna picture what it would even look like ... Must say, she's got quite an imagination for such an uptight bird."

Though he kept his expression relatively impassive, Ren's face grew noticeably red. "It must have been the alcohol."

Kyoichi looked skeptical as he dug through the drained noodles, plucking out pieces of boiled egg and popping them into his mouth one by one. "_Suuuure_ ..."

"Go _on_. If it wasn't the speculations about my ... preferences, then what was it that upset her?"

The informant jabbed in the actor's direction with his chopsticks. "What he said _next_. That's what did it. For damn sure."

"Which was ... ?"

Kyoichi smiled without an ounce of amusement. "Heh. He had a few theories as to how you _really_ got so big in showbiz ... She didn't like those. Not one bit. 'Specially the one about you ..." He paused, for the first time sparing a moment of deliberation. "How to put this delicately?"

And then, in a moment that would go down as probably the most shocking of the already unpredictable night, Kyoichi held a fist up to one cheek and stuck his tongue through the other, rolling it around in an unmistakeable gesture***.

"_That's_ what did it." He nodded contemplatively, oblivious to the nearly identical looks of astonishment on the two men's faces. "I was too wasted to keep a leash on her, so next thing I know, she's screamin' somethin' about disrespect in his face and we've got a hold of the guy's collar - "

Yashiro's eyes seemed ready to bulge right out of his skull. "We ... ? You mean, _you_ didn't ... She was the one who - ?"_ What am I saying? Nothing about this makes any sense!_

"Can't say for sure. We started to get jumbled the more she drank. The lines between us got smudged a bit. She used _my_ moves and a few of _my_ words, alright. But, she swung on him of her accord, not mine. And, boy, was she ... _pissed_. Man, I seen me mum take out a john with the old cast-iron a time or two, but I never seen a bird that hot in many moons."

It didn't take long for the implications to sink in. Ren and Yashiro began to volley back and forth, panic rising immediately to the surface.

"If this gets out -"

"If she's _recognized_ - "

" - could be assault charges - "

"It probably wasn't a good idea to come back he - "

"Oi!" Kyoichi broke back into the conversation, transparently annoyed by the interruption. "I said she swung on 'im, ya knobheads! I never said she _hit_ the guy, now did I?"

"Well, didn't she?" Yashiro asked, pointing to the bandaging on Kyoichi's hand.

"Uh-uh. She coulda had him easy with that swing of hers, but she pulled the punch at the last second. Aimed for the glass in his hand." He rolled his eyes. "Crazy wench."

Setting aside his bowl, Kyoichi pulled the bandaging back just enough to expose his knuckles. They were scraped and raw, the scarring fresh and shallow.

"See? I came right back out when I felt the blood. Made her take her _other_ hand off the prat's neck, then booked it with Rae right behind me. 'Sides, ours wasn't the _only_ fight in here. So if they're throwin' us in the clink for that, they'd have to round up about four other - "

Ren stared at the numerous cuts on those pale knuckles. "She did that _intentionally_?"

"Uh-huh. Swerved and punched that glass to pieces in one shot."

"Why?"

The young man shrugged. "He spoke ill of you. As I said, _she didn't like that_."

"But ... why attack in the first place?" he wondered, more to himself than anyone else. "What could she hope to accomplish? She could have been seriously hurt if he had decided to fight back. Why put herself in that kind of danger?"

"Hell if _I_ know, man. I can't figure my _own_ mind when I'm bliltzed. Who can say what goes on in hers?"

_You were **there**! _Ren nearly shouted, ready to tear his own hair out at the insanity of it all. "How bad is the rest of it?" he asked instead, weary beyond belief.

Kyoichi sucked in the last of the noodles, lifting an eyebrow in question. "The rest of what?"

"Your - _Her_ hand."

"What you on about? She caught the glass straight on. The rest of her ... _our_ hand didn't touch the shards."

"Then why does the bandaging extend to the wrist?" Yashiro asked.

The hoodlum looked back down at his hand. "Huh. Good question. I ... didn't come back out for the rest of the night. Maybe she went and got herself into more trouble while I was ... asleep? Offline? Whatever the hell ya call it. Let's see now..."

After a few moments of futile tugging, the black-clad urchin swore impatiently. Then, in a gesture that was strangely familiar, he imperiously held out the bandaged hand to Ren. He looking for all the world like a despot demanding tribute despite his peasant garb. "Help me out, will ya? Now I'm curious!"

_Why this sense of deja vu?_ Ren thought as he reached for the offered hand.

His fingertips had scarcely made contact when, lightning-quick, the hand slipped from his touch and wrenched itself behind the delinquent's back as though coveted jewels were clutched in that swathed palm. The bewilderment in those golden eyes left no doubt in their minds that he was no longer the entity controlling his limb. "The hell ... ?"

A look of understanding washed over the young man's features.

"_Aah_. Guess my time's up then. Cheers. Thanks for the f -"

The mantle of Kyoichi abruptly slid into oblivion, leaving Kyoko Mogami seated before them. The breath rasped through her nostrils like she had just run a marathon at a full gallop. The color drained from her face at the sight of her partially exposed hand, and she roughly yanked the bandaging back into place.

"You asked, and he answered. May we leave now?" She stood and practically bolted out the restaurant before he could scrape together enough wherewithal to register that she had asked him a question.

_Answers that only lead to more questions, _Ren thought, on his feet and in pursuit with revived determination. _Questions this "Emperor" would like answered._

* * *

><p><strong>*Ah, yes. The rare "Flat What" (Thanks, TV Tropes!): When a question mark just doesn't convey the level of confusion being expressed.<strong>

****This might be veering off into fan-wank territory, but from what I've gathered from the manga, it seems like this (Kyoko giving the impression of seeing Ren as a benevolent but intimidating father figure as opposed to a romantic interest) is one of many roadblocks for the two of them and something that makes Ren especially uncomfortable. Probably not an observation worth devoting a _footnote_ to, but just some food for thought. Chew it over in the reviews. Or not. Whatever's good.**

***** Namely, one of fellatio, for those who either need it spelled out or just weren't 100% sure, given how shoddily I described the gesture in question.**

**Till next time, folks!  
><strong>


	3. Nothing But The Truth

_Disclaimer_: I do not own _Skip Beat!_

**AN:** Final twist of lime before we get to the honest-to-god lemon, y'all. Shared POV.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Nothing But The Truth (Ultra Violet)<em>**

* * *

><p>Kyoko raced out into the parking lot, the cool night air barely making a dent in the inferno roiling through her skin. A lethal mix of shame and fear bubbled up inside of her, hot and acidic. Any moment now she expected to spontaneously combust. Her - <em>No, Kyoichi's!<em> - words echoed through her head, taunting her endlessly.

_He called him Emperor. Oh, kill me now, he called him Emperor!_

She clutched her head and groaned aloud. How had she lost control of Kyoichi _again_? She was sober and _still_ she couldn't stop him from - !

"Mogami-san?"

She froze like a deer in the crosshairs of an rifle. How had he gotten outside so fast? How could his voice carry like that when he hadn't even raised it? How was the feel of his hand coming down onto her shoulder a moment later like an anchor chained to her leg?

Kyoko turned her head in the general direction of his voice, but didn't dare look up at him. Would she ever be able to look him in the eye again? Would she ever be able to occupy the same room as him without running away?

"Yes?"

"We weren't quite finished yet."

His voice was so kindly. Was it pity? Compassion? Did it even matter? _No, it didn't_, because that gentle tone shamed her more than any bitter word or contemptuous sneer he could have hurled at her. Not that he would have. Which made it _so_ much worse.

Even through the thick fabric of her gakuran jacket she could feel the heat of that large hand like a branding iron. She shifted under the weight of it, and his hand fell away easily.

"But he's gone, and I'm here now," she fired back shakily, too on edge to keep her temper from flaring up. "Can we leave now? Please?"

He was silent as he continued to stare down at her. Then he nodded and looked over his shoulder.

"Yashiro? Are you alright back there?"

"Mmm-hmm," he mumbled as he approached, "just fine. Let's be off then."

Kyoko stared in transparent surprise as Ren's manager passed them, stumbling slightly as he made for the car. "He only had two drinks, didn't he?" she whispered.

Ren nodded, still puzzling out the mystery that was Kyoko Mogami's brand of method acting. _Aware enough to take note of that, but not in control enough to keep Kyoichi from tattling on her ... ?_

"How is he already, uh ... ?" She gave a deliberate wobble, miming Yashiro's tipsy movements.

"Just because _you_ apparently have the staying power of a T-Rex, doesn't mean everyone _else_ does, Mogami-san."

Her face turned a brilliant shade of tomato. She pulled the collar of her coat high and the brim of her hat down low, shielding herself as much as she could from his unwavering gaze. The two walked towards Ren's car, where Yashiro leaned, gazing up at the sky and rambling incoherently under his breath.

The three rode in stony silence that was occasionally punctuated by Yashiro's odd but perceptive mumblings emerging from the back seat of the car. "It's as quiet as a morgue in here. Someone should say something."

They dropped him off, the both of them getting out of the car to walk him to his door and make sure he made it safely to his bed without any mishap. The two actors walked back to the car, still "as quiet as a morgue", and drove on. About a mile or so from the daruma-ya, Ren finally spoke up, when it became obvious that he wouldn't be able to guilt her into talking with the silent treatment. His words made her jump. They came out clear and sharp as though they hadn't spent the last fifteen minutes not speaking to each other:

"I might be able to _help_, you know. If you tell me what's wrong."

Recovering instantly, she responded, "There's nothing wrong, so I don't need any help. Thank you."

"You're brawling with barflies. You need _some_ kind of help."

She folded her arms across her chest and sank a bit deeper into her seat. "You say that like I'm making a habit of this kind of behavior. I'm not! Okay?"

"I'm just trying to help," he said, sounding just wounded enough for her to pick up on it, but not so much that she could sense it was (at least in part) an act. His foot pressed down on the accelerator, his decision having been made long before they had even gotten in the car.

With a weary sigh, she pulled her bag up onto her lap from where it sat between by her feet as the daruma-ya came into view. "And I appreciate that, I really do, I just don't think it's worth ... w-worth your ... Um, Tsu-Tsuruga-san?"

"Yes?"

"We passed it."

"Passed what?"

"The daruma-ya. We passed the daruma-ya."

He glanced back, hardly concerned, as though they had passed some sort of landmark that wasn't really of interest to anyone but naive tourists.

"Yes," he acknowledged. "We did. Is that a problem?"

"That's kind of ... where I live."_ What is this? __He's dropped me off a lots of times. He knows that was my stop.  
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He nodded, entirely too cheerful all of a sudden. "I know."

"So then," she asked, fighting for calm, "where are you going?"

"Home."

Her pulse began to race. She was almost certain he could hear it pounding in her throat.

Home? _His_ home? They were going to his _house_?

"Oh. Was there ... something ... you forgot, or ... ?"

"No. But there _is_ something I need to get."

She relaxed. So they wouldn't be there for very long then.

"Oh! What's that?" she asked brightly.

He glared out of the windshield, all pretense of civility gone. "A pair of scissors for those bandages."

"_You said you were driving me home_!"

A grin that felt more wicked than even Kyoichi's stretched across his face. "But I didn't say _whose_ home, now, did I?"

_God, I sound like some kind of villain. _

Ren glanced over at Kyoko and saw that mulish look she got whenever her heels were dug in on an issue. He knew from experience that she wouldn't budge unless he pushed. With this in mind, he dismissed any misgivings he had about taking such a high-handed approach.

_If that's the part I have to play, then so be it ..._

"I don't believe you!" she howled, shoving her bag back down onto the floor. "I just ... I just don't _believe_ you!"

He gave a lazy shrug and an indulgent smile, oozing casual villainy from his every pore. "You won't tell me what I want to know. So you're not going home until you do. What's not to believe?"

She made a sound, an outraged cross between a gasp and a growl, then proceeded to sit stone-still in silence for the duration of the ride. They pulled through the gate of his apartment complex, and she still didn't say a word, though he could feel her growing more tense. He parked, shut off the engine and then came around to open her door for her when it became clear that she wasn't going to move of her own accord. Still, she didn't say anything. They were in the elevator by the time he decided to break the silence yet again.

"How disappointing," he drawled contemplatively, as if thinking aloud. "I expected you to put up more of a fight."

"Precious energy is squandered in any endeavor which seeks to divert the inevitable," she muttered without looking up.

His mouth twitched into a grin at this flat pronouncement. "Don't tell me, you're playing Sun Tzu next week?"

She glared up at him from under the brim of her hat, golden eyes lit with frustration. A very immature thrill shot through him, and he made a mental note to annoy her more often. He found himself relishing his part. For the first time since hitting puberty, he wished he had a mustache to twirl.

"_Tsuruga-san_ - " she began in a low, dangerous voice.

"It's Ren."

She blinked, going instantly from irritation to bewilderment. "Pardon?"

"I want you to call me Ren."

Kyoko looked at him as though he had just handed her to disassemble a bomb. "... _Why_?"

"Why not? You called me that quite a bit when we first got acquainted."

"That was before I _knew_ you!"

He chuckled. "You've got it backwards, you're supposed to grow _more_ familiar over time, not less. Besides, if you're going to go around defending my honor and all, I think you've earned the right to call me by name, don't you?"

The telltale shift in her gaze, widening and then sliding swiftly to the numbers lighting up overhead, told him far more than he could have ever gotten out of her in words. He had spoken in jest, but maybe he was on to something. The elevator doors slid open. She stomped out, making a beeline down the hallway with him not far behind.

The moment they were in his living room, Kyoko crossed to the opposite side of the room, putting the couch, his coffee table and a few feet of floor space between them. She didn't even pause to remove her shoes, her coat or her hat. She faced him with Kyoichi's gunslinger stance, arms crossed high on her (_Unfortunately_) still-bound chest and a foreboding scowl on her face.

_God, you're beautiful, _he thought suddenly, _even when you're in drag and you look like you're about to tear my throat out, you're so ... FOCUS._

He softened his tone, momentarily abandoning his role as Lord of Scoundrels*.

"That's what you were trying to do, wasn't it?"

She arched her brow.

"You were trying to protect me?" he clarified.

Though her face grew noticeably red, she gave a scoff that didn't convince either one of them. "Hmph. From what?"

"I don't know, you tell me. What made you angry enough to take that swing?"

"What made me ... ? I was _drunk_. We've more than established this!" She spun away, no longer content to just be distant. He crept slowly across the room, drawn to her ramrod-straight back.

"Yes, we have," he agreed with infuriating patience, "but that doesn't mean you didn't have your reasons for acting the way you did. I'd like to hear them, preferably _before_ the night is out."

"What do you want from me? I told you what happened, isn't that enough?"

"No. It isn't. I know the who, what, where and when. It's the _why_ that seems to keep eluding me. _Why_ would you do something so reckless?"

"It didn't seem reckless at the time. Then again I was _drunk_, which we've _established_, so -"

"Are you going to tell me, or do I have to turn you upside down and shake it out of you? Because I'm not above that."

The mental image of her ankles in his hands was ... pretty distracting, so she forced herself to ignore it. "That _won't_ be necessary. Because there's nothing to tell. I had too much to drink and acted like an idiot. A violent idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. End of story."

"No, actually, it isn't. There's a definite gap in this story, something you're deliberately not telling me. Kyoichi seems to think you got into even more trouble after you left the bar, and I'm inclined to agree with him, given how quick you were to cover your hand back up."

"I d-didn't want to expose the cuts to the open air just ye -"

"Liar. Quit stalling."

"It's all so fuzzy now, I-I really can't remember what I - "

She froze in the middle of her lie, skin pulsing to high alert in the instant it took to realize that Ren was barely a foot behind her. How had he gotten so close again without her noticing? He must have been approaching slowly the entire time she had been talking to the wall! Still, how had she not felt his shadow fall across her? How had she missed the way his voice had been getting gradually clearer? How had she not picked up on that _scent_ - ?

"You're not as good at lying as you seem to think you are,_ Kyoko-chan_."

So the first-name basis _would _be mutual after all. She flinched slightly as he stressed the intimate use of her name in that low, insinuating voice, but was suddenly too indignant to dwell on it. "I don't think I'm _good_ at it! Why would you - !"

He leaned down into her peripheral vision, cutting her off mid-protest with nothing more than the sight of his hair coming into view_._ She wondered if it was still as soft as the time she had stroked it when he fell asleep in her lap. She felt her face grow even hotter at the memory of those silky strands beneath her fingers. Why, of all things, did her mind have to go there? Why, of all times, _now_?

"Then why do you keep doing it?"

She steeled herself against the inexplicable siren song emanating from those glossy black locks and forged ahead, arms folded across her chest: "Because there are times, such as this, when the truth is an ugly thing that is best avoided."

He was silent for a moment as he continued to loom just over her shoulder.

"Such _as_ ... ?" he prompted.

She sighed. He wasn't going to let this go. And the longer she dragged it out, the more relentless he would be. A thought occurred to her: If she let it drag on for _too_ long, hoping to wait him out, would he really make good on his threat to shake the truth out of her? Again, came the mental image of those long, steely fingers wrapping around her ankles ...

She swallowed. Better to just say it and be done with this whole mess. "That I ..."

He leaned a bit closer. "Yes?"

"I ... "

"Yes?"

"... kind of ..."

"_Yes_?"

"... emasculated you."

Silence descended, so total and all-encompassing it set her teeth on edge.

He straightened and rounded the couch, away from her. Her heart nearly stopped as she watched his retreating back. _That's it, I've done it. He knows now, and he wants nothing to do with me. He'll never speak to me again, he'll deny my very existence to my face when we cross paths, he'll claim that I've passed away if posed a question concerning me, he'll -_

Two words emerged from the darkness of the hallway: "Follow me."

Kyoko exhaled, a resurgence of anxiety mixing with a hysterical sort of relief as she stepped after him.

She recalled that his bedroom was on the left side, at the very end of the hall. He veered to the right about halfway there, stepping into a room she had passed but never entered on her other visits. He flipped the light switch as he walked in, revealing it to be a small office, furnished with a ceiling fan, a desk, a leather swivel chair and a bookshelf as tall as its owner.

He indicated wordlessly for her to sit in the swivel chair and began to peruse the bookshelf. Kyoko took the seat, noting that her feet didn't touch the ground because the chair was adjusted to accommodate Ren's height. She searched for the lever that would bring her down and tried not to dwell on how much bigger he was.

As if on cue, his shadow, cast by the overhead light (_He does it on purpose. It's got to be on purpose!_) crept over her, signaling his approach.

He placed on the desk in front of her, a dictionary.

"Would you oblige me," he asked with measured calm, "and look up that word you just used, please?"

Her eyes widened, and a chill sweat broke out on her brow. He couldn't be serious. He just couldn't be. There was no way -

"Kyo - ?"

"I-I'm looking, I'm looking," she said, frantically turning pages.

"Did you find it?"

"... Y-yes."

"How many definitions are there?"

She counted. "Two."

"Read me the first one, please."

"Um ... Verb. To render less masculine."

"Am I less of a man to you?"

She flinched with her whole body, nearly fumbling the dictionary. What kind of question was _that_? _How should I know?_

"That's not what I -"

"A yes or no answer will suffice, Kyoko-chan."

"_No_! I wasn't - "

He flashed his gentlemanly smile once more, and she immediately shut up. "Alright then. Read the second one."

"Verb. To ... "

Her fingers tightened on the pages, her gut lurched and a blush so hot it was physically painful to endure fanned out across her skin like a wildfire. She muttered the definition too faintly for even her to hear, the indignity of it stealing most of her voice. But he was standing so close. Surely he had heard. _Surely_.

He leaned down, coming even closer than necessary. "Say again?"

_Or not._

"I-I'd really rather n-not - "

"And I really rather you do. Say it again."

"To ... castrate."

A soft chuckle just overhead like the distant rumble of thunder set her even further on edge. _The devil's own laugh!_

"I assure you, Kyoko-chan, I'm very much ... _intact_."

He spoke the word very carefully, enunciating it until it was a knife twisting in her side.

"So it stands to reason that you did not, in fact, _emasculate_ me."

She slammed the book shut and threw it down onto his desk hard enough to make even him flinch back, surging to her feet as she did.

"_That isn't what I_ _meant_!"

"Then why did you use that word?"

"I was given to understand ... that men tend not to like it when others fight on their behalf! That they see it as ... emasculating. Demeaning, even."

"You think you can put on a fairly convincing costume and know how men think, eh?"

"N-no, I - !"

"Ah, so it's only the inner workings of _my_ mind you feel you have such insight into?"

"_No_! I ... None of this is coming out right. I only meant ... it was bad enough for me to attack him. It was almost worse to presume to do it _for_ you, as though I had the right to ... defend you."

"Defend me from _what_ exactly? He spoke out of turn, but he's entitled to his opinion. What he said doesn't necessarily constitute an attack on my, ah, manhood, as it were."

She froze at his words. Then lifted a gaze so dark as to be a malediction all its own.

"_That_," she said softly, "is a matter of opinion."

A jolt of awareness blazed through him. He had tripped some kind of landmine. Now they were getting somewhere. "How so?"

"Because I've _worked_ with you. I've _seen_ you work. I've seen almost everything you've been in! He had _no right_ to imply that your success was due to _anything_ ... ANYTHING other than talent. Or hard work or your professionalism. He had_ no. Right_. Especially to imply that you would do ... _that_ ... to succeed!"

His chest tightened until he felt as though it might shatter to a million pieces. She couldn't be indifferent to him. She couldn't say these things, feel this strongly on his behalf and not have some kind of interest in him ... Could she?

Kyoko sagged against the chair, the wind momentarily taken out of her sails. "The truth is, even though I would have still been mad ... I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been drinking. And acting as Kyoichi would, to boot. If we manage to get through this, remind me never to drink and act at the same time."

His heart throbbed almost painfully, both at her use of the word _we_ in relation to the two of them and the implication that they might not make it out of this situation with their relationship (such as it were) intact. "What makes you think we won't?"

Her teeth clench visibly. "Because when I got angry, it wasn't as a colleague. Or not just as a colleague. When he took a swipe at you, it felt like he was doing the same to me. To the best part of me. And I think that's when I realized ..."

"Yes?"

She lifted her head deliberately, looking him straight in the eye even though he could sense that every fiber of her being wanted very much to deny that he was even in the room as she finally, at long, long last said what had set her night of debauchery into motion: "That my attachment to you ... might not be so professional. Not anymore."

A sharp intake of breath and a slight upward shift in his stance was all she registered before she allowed herself to look away. She inhaled, then exhaled, slowly and deliberately, just to confirm that she could.

She had said it.

She had said it, and the world hadn't crumbled. The hard part was over. She closed her eyes and began to confess in full as a lightheaded detachment crept over her. It was as if, with that first admission, the truth was no longer so hard to say. She could deal with the inevitable fallout, the ending of their association, when it came.

For now, there was only the truth, shameful as it was:

"I can't believe I let it happen. You were so good to me. Better than I've ever deserved. Better than anyone's ever thought I deserved. And I went and messed it up by wanting more. By thinking there could ever _be_ more between us. Or that I deserve more from you than you already gave me."

He didn't say anything, didn't move, couldn't even think really beyond wondering why she was speaking in the past tense when he was still standing in front of her. She kept going in that eerily disjointed tone, sounding farther and farther away with each word. He clenched his fists behind his back to keep from yanking her back. _You're not leaving me. I won't let you -  
><em>

"We ran away after the fight. Moko-san took a cab home, but I didn't want to go home yet and I ... I wanted to remember what I had done. I wasn't _proud_ of what I'd done, but ... I _liked_ that I had done it. If that makes any sense. Which it doesn't. But I _did_. I wanted to know that I had acted on your behalf. That in some way, even in a way that didn't really matter," she finally looked back up at him, the pain in her voice and her eyes threatening to crush his resolve, "I managed to protect you. As you've protected me."

"So we went to this tattoo parlor and I told the man that I wanted something temporary. To mark something beautiful that could never last. He laughed and said that sounded an awful lot like a marriage. So ..."

And at long, _long_ last, she reached for the scissors at the edge of the desk. Slipped her fingers very carefully through the handles, slipping the blades very carefully under the cloth and making one clean snip after another until the hand was laid bare before his eyes.

There on her hand were many complicated, arabesque swirls, an amethyst mosaic of desire and hope emblazoned across her skin. Even without being told, without knowing the design's origins or meaning, he knew he was looking at something immensely personal, something so intimate as to be a form of nudity.

"The ink," she said slowly, "is called henna. The practice is called _mehendi_. It's done in India. For ... brides. On their wedding days."

_Oh_.

Though it initially seemed inadequate, given the gravity of the situation, it was all Ren could think. And if he had opened his mouth to speak, it would have been the only thing he would have been capable of saying.

_Oh._

Such a simple word, almost _too_ simple at one measly syllable, and yet in its simplicity, it encompassed so much, expanding and expanding within him until he practically hummed with it. It was a church bell, a temple gong, a holy vibration rippling from the top of his head, to the tips of his toes and back up again, exciting every molecule of his being along its merry way.

_Ooooh ...  
><em>

She kept going, heedless of the fact that her sempai was achieving some bizarre form of enlightenment right above her. "It was the height of barbarism. I fought over you like you were some kind of object. Like you were mine to fight for. I presumed to 'defend your honor', as you put it. And then I ..." She stopped, at a loss to put her biggest crime into words, eyes misting over slightly as she recalled the other night.

"Claimed me for yourself?"

She flinched at the stinging accuracy of his words, spoken in such a gentle, almost ... caressing tone that made them sting all the more.

"Or tried to. In a sense. I guess ... Y-yes ..."

She forced herself to laugh, then immediately stopped when she realized how similar the sound was to a sob. She soldiered on, shakily fighting back tears and determined not to let them fall in front of him. "When I woke up and saw it, sober, its meaning hadn't been lost. If anything, it was even clearer by the light of day. I was sick to my stomach and giddy as a child every time I saw you today. It wouldn't go away, no matter how much I tried to make it. I was going to tell you eventually ... Or maybe, I'm lying again ... I like to think that, if you hadn't found out ... I would have come to you with this. Eventually ..."

She put on the most heartrendingly false smile he had ever seen and stood up, still not looking at him. "But I've embarrassed the two of us enough for one night, hmm? You know now. There's no reason to linger over this. I hope we can still be friends ... Or colleagues, at least."

"Am I not allowed a response, Kyoko-chan?"

That tone of his really had to go. She could _almost_ imagine that it was pity, if it weren't so ... not.

"There ... isn't anything to respond _to_, Tsuru ... _Ren_. You don't feel the same way, so why would there be - ?"

"Have I _said_ that I don't feel the same way?"

She blinked. Something wasn't right.

"Umm ... no?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

"You haven't said ... not in so many words, but ... I just assumed ..."

A pregnant pause. Then he rounded the desk, coming to stand between her and the door she was angled towards.

"You seem to be laboring under the illusion," he murmured, "that such a thing is impossible."

"... Isn't it? I mean, _it is_!" She blinked again. Something _definitely_ wasn't right. "Isn't ... it?"

"What makes you think that?"

She opened her mouth, prepared to list reason upon reason as to why such a thing wasn't possible, to catalog every one of her flaws and damages in such excruciating detail that he would never approach her again ...

... Only to promptly snap it shut when she looked up and saw the light of heaven itself in his eyes.

_What on ... earth?_

It blazed from the depths of his dark irises, radiating outward into an aura that made him glow like an archangel. This wasn't charm. She had seen him charm, both on screen and off, and this ... was something else _entirely_. Had it only been charm, she would have been dazzled or perhaps annoyed with herself for even noticing. Right now she was well and truly undone by what she saw on his face, struck dumb to her core as this light was a piercing lance, sliding clean through whatever lay in its path. At any moment she expected to come apart, unravel like a ball of yarn at his feet.

"Well," she began again, struggling to disengage from this magnetic pull, "there's ... I ... Um, because ... _Well_ ..."

His mouth very slowly curved into a half-smile, lending a decidedly earthy edge to his almost seraphic demeanor. "Yes?"

_I can't think. Why can't I think?_

Perhaps it was the full one hundred and eighty degree shift from relentless determination to this languid contentment. Maybe it was the overwhelming but inexplicable sense that something of cataclysmic proportions was about to take place. Maybe - and of this she was almost certain - it was that smile. Whatever it was, it eroded the peculiar detachment that had taken hold of her, and suddenly everything felt hyper-real as details began to come into sharp focus.

The man in front of her was the biggest celebrity in the country. She was in his house, his office, sitting in his desk chair. "Kyoichi's" hat was on his couch out in his living room. The whir of the fan overhead was strangely hypnotic. Her skin was unbearably hot all of a sudden. One of her shoelaces was untied. She was looking this man straight in the eye.

And he was looking back at her, still infinitely patient and semi-divine, but now as wantonly predatory as a jungle cat sizing up its quarry.

_This conversation. End it. Now.  
><em>

"... Can I ... go now ... please?"

His smile widened just a tad, cranking up the glow around him until it was near-blinding. He stepped aside, clearing the path to the door. "Of course you can."

_Too easy_, she thought and instantly regretted it, as her split second of disbelieving hesitation seemed to tell him everything she wanted to keep hidden at that moment. She knew it in her gut and saw it in his eyes, as clear as the ink on her hand: _You're not going anywhere_.

She turned and walked to the door, unsteady on her feet as she had been the night before despite her current sobriety. She moved with a dreamlike slowness, as though the air had become caramel-thick. He couldn't mean to use her feelings against her. Especially when she had made it clear that they were unbidden. He wouldn't be that cruel. Surely this wasn't the first declaration of love he had had to contend with? He must have turned away many women (and probably a few men) by this point.

And he would turn away many more. Because he had someone he loved already.

And it wasn't her.

Ignoring as best she could how this thought lanced her chest like sword, she forged on. _Bag_,_ hat. Out._

Still moving like a zombie, she turned the lock, then the knob and pulled. It budged barely an inch or two before a large hand struck out over her shoulder and pushed it shut, yanking the knob out of her hand in the process.

Much, _much_ too late, she realized that she was once again engulfed in his towering shadow. Worse yet, he was standing even closer than before, so close that his body's heat was like a winter coat, enveloping her almost but not quite to the point of suffocation. With the hand that wasn't braced against the door, he gently pulled the strap of her bag off her shoulder and placed it on the ground by her feet.

"You ... Y-you said I could - "

Breath as hot as a branding iron brushed down her neck, and her nose filled with the maddening scent of him.

"Mmm? What did I say?" He could have just awoken from a long, rejuvenating rest, as his voice now had the calm, unhurried cadence of someone with all the time in the world.

"_G-go_. You said I could go."

He chuckled, and the sound was a finger tracing heady fire down her spine. She started to fidget, then immediately stopped when her back brushed against his chest.

"I said you could go," he acknowledged, "but I didn't say that I'd _let_ you go."

She swallowed. He was so close that he probably heard it. "... Will you ... ?"

"I've no intention of letting you leave, Kyoko-chan."

He said it as if despairing of himself, though he didn't sound the least bit sorry. It was a playful kind of sorrow she heard in his voice, a heated whisper that did strange things to her.

"I guess that means I lied. Just like you," he whispered in that almost-mocking tone. "It doesn't feel good to be lied to, does it?"

When she didn't answer, he pressed his cheek into the curve of her neck. The gesture was strangely chaste, almost like a child seeking refuge, despite the very adult tremble it sent through her.

"_Does_ it?"

She made a small sound in the back of her throat that was neither a yes or a no. This seemed to satisfy him, because he didn't ask again.

"But if you want honesty ... I can be very honest. Turn around."

She didn't move, didn't dare speak. She had read that some animals were known to evade predators by standing completely still and blending in with their environment. Maybe if she stood still long enough he would suddenly realize that he was seducing a door?

"Honesty entails saying what needs to be said to someone's face, Kyoko-chan. Not the back of their head. Although, I must admit," he conceded with another torturous brush of his cheek against her neck, "I don't necessarily mind saying it like this. If you prefer -"

He managed to straighten fast enough to avoid getting inadvertently headbutted as she spun to face him. Her saffron eyes blazed in her flushed face, not with anger, but the defensiveness of a trapped animal. He was so close he could see her pulse beating in her throat, feel the exquisite heat rolling off of her body.

"Any time you're ready," she said tersely, looking anywhere but at him. An impressive feat given how near he was.

He braced his arm against the door far above her head and leaned over her again, adopting a deceptively casual stance. When he spoke, it was as though it was aimed at the top of her head, since she still refused to look up.

"Did you happen to catch that waitress's name?"

Her brows furrowed in confusion.

"You know, the one Kyoichi more or less propositioned earlier this evening?"

She flinched. "Hiromi, I think it was. Wh-why, what about her? Did you think she was pretty? Because I can probably introduce you if want, she works night shifts mostly, but - "

"I would sell my soul," he said over her building tangent, "if it made you look at me the way you looked at her."

The words were the verbal equivalent of a massive system error. _Does not compute_. Her mind immediately went to work rejecting it in order to fix the glitch, but he kept talking, forcing her to process even more incompatible data.

"I have to stop myself from kissing you every time I see you. And every time you smile ... Oh, Kyoko, look at me ... See what you've done to me, Kyoko-chan."

She looked up and saw straight through his heavenly glow to the truth of his words_._ He was serious. He _meant it_. That look in his eyes left no room for the dubious luxury of doubt or second-guessing: This was happening.

"You're the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. The last thing on my mind when I drift off to sleep. As for the time in between, you're never far from my mind and heart. And I wouldn't have it any other way."

"R-Ren ... "

But there was no stopping him, as he seemed to be gaining momentum with each confession. He leaned down and whispered things into her ear, what he loved about her, how she drove him to distraction without even trying, what he planned to do to her, what he planned to let her do to him, until it didn't matter that he was Ren Tsuruga. He was just Ren for the moment, a man. A magnificent man, but a man nonetheless, human and caressing and hopeful and so very close as his fingers stroked her face, his touch feather-light.

The words _No_, _Don't_, and _Stop_ vanished from her vocabulary. Though she knew without a doubt that he would cease and desist if she asked him to, she was so far beyond wanting him to that it was a non-issue.

_This is happening. Right now._

Her knees threatened to give out as he lovingly assailed her, laying waste to each and every fortress wall that lay between him and her heart, her body, her very soul when it came right down to it. The temptation to fall against him, to just give in to his caress was strong enough to keep her from actually doing it, but only just. So she stood there, balanced on the razor's edge of desire, teetering between the urge to escape and the urge to surrender. He stoked the fire inside, whispering _still_ all the things he wanted to do with her (she noted with a deep blush that the list seemed never-ending) and gently pulling the hat off of her head so that he could run his fingers through her hair.

"I've wanted you for so long ... "

_Say something_.

"But you told Bo - !"

_... Say something ELSE!_

He arched his brow, flooding her veins with ice. She clamped her mouth shut, only to have him reach up and trace the curve of her lower lip with his thumb.

"I knew I couldn't trust a giant chicken to keep his mouth shut. Please, go on," he said soothingly, "what did I tell Bo?"

She gaped at his apparent perfidy. "Th-that there was someone you were already interested in! A high school girl, aged ... six ... teen ..."

He grinned with all the satisfaction in the world as he watched the truth hit her roughly two years after the fact. She shut her eyes and pressed her forehead against his chest. She was very, very weary of herself all of a sudden. _God, I'm an idiot ..._

"Just how many charming schoolgirls do you think I _meet_ in a day, Kyoko-chan?" he asked, shaking with laughter.

She headbutted him in the chest with a frustrated groan, making him laugh even harder. She looked up, prepared to scold him mercilessly, only for him to look down at just the same moment, all traces of laughter gone.

"You still don't think it's possible, do you?"

"It can't _be_. It doesn't make any sense. You're ... you're _you_. You're _Ren_. You don't ... You shouldn't ... _Oh_ ..."

She inhaled sharply as he straightened once more, without taking a step back. The brush of his body sliding against the length of hers was more intoxicating than the liquor from the night before. He touched his knuckles to her chin, tilting her head up so that she was looking at him. She quaked against him, drawing from him a smile heartbreaking in its uncomplicated sweetness.

"Then that's the last straw, Kyoko-chan. The _very_ last. I'm going to do everything in my power to disabuse you of that notion."

"... Everything?"

"Every. Last. Thing."

He leaned down, her chin still gently gripped in his fingers. He tilted her head farther back and pressed his lips to her racing pulse. He chuckled as it throbbed even faster beneath his kiss. His hands slid down her waist and met behind her back, drawing her the last remaining inch that separated their bodies. She squirmed in his embrace, exciting them both.

"Wake up, Tsuruga-san. Y-you're dreaming. You'll be late for work. Wake up now."

"I've dreamed of you. Every night, it seems, I dream of you ..."

She shut her eyes, her mind growing more and more fevered with each word. "Then maybe _I'm_ dreaming."

"In my dreams, you call me Ren. Over and over again."

She tried tuning him out, to absolutely no avail. "Yes. Yes, I've overslept and I need to - "

"You scream it in my arms ... so loud my neighbors can hear."

" ... to wake up. I need to ... wake up."

His fingers slipped deftly into the sides of her loose pants, grasping her hips and guiding them gently against his. She shivered with awareness as she made contact with the unmistakeable bulge of his erection.

"Ooh ... you don't ... fight fair ..."

"Love and war, Kyoko. All's fair."

"L-l ... ove?"

"Yes, love. Not just lust. Though there's that, too." He "In spades."

He leaned down, his path unmistakeable. Scarcely inches away from her face, Kyoko reached up and pressed her hennaed fingers gently to his mouth, stopping him in his tracks.

"You should know ... I should ... warn you ..."

He kissed her fingers, intrigued. "Mm-hm?"

"I've dreamed ... of you, too. And in my dreams ..."

He leaned in, spellbound.

"... Well ... I can't quite stop myself ..."

She felt his lips curve into a smile against her skin just before he gently pulled her hand away.

"Then don't."

And those lips touched hers, flooding her with incandescence and leaving no doubt as to whether or not she was awake.

And as if it was the most natural thing in the world; as if she had rehearsed this moment until it was second nature; as if she weren't about two seconds away from melting into a puddle at his feet; she reached up and cupped his face even closer to hers, drawing him deeper into the chaste kiss until it wasn't so chaste anymore and neither of them could breathe properly.

When she finally came up for air, her withdrawal unbalanced him a little. There was something immensely gratifying about how flushed and dizzy and happy he looked.

Gratifying, but ... provoking somehow, in a way she couldn't quite understand. She wondered what else she could do to produce this same effect in him. Her mind grew dark with the possibilities as she stared into his eyes.

"On second thought, maybe you _shouldn_'_t_ do that."

She panicked. Had he somehow heard what she was thinking? "D-do what? What am I doing?"

"That look. The one you gave Hiromi. I feel like I'm about to be eaten alive." He leaned down and nuzzled her neck when she started to look a bit dejected. "In a _good_ way, but still, don't test me ... My self-control, as you may have noticed, isn't what it used to be."

"Could have fooled me," she whispered, marveling at her sudden boldness, "_ ... Emperor_."

His eyes flashed at the strange endearment, at the palpable heat in her voice. He leaned back down and kissed her soundly enough to make her head spin. She whimpered at the sensation, and the sound deepened to a moan when his tongue licked deftly into her mouth. When her knees finally gave out, he gathered her up into his arms, lifting her fully off of the ground. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he pressed her against his front door.

"So that wasn't part of the script?"

"N-no. It's just ... this thing I call you. In my head. Sometimes."

Before he could ask, she buried her face in his neck and inhaled. Her soft lips trailed fire along his throat and derailed his train of thought. Her breath sent tingles shooting straight out to the tips of his fingers and toes.

"What_ is_ that, Ren? Please, tell me what it is, I've been dying to know." Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, breathy and broken and almost but not quite harsh with lust.

"Th-that's my neck," he replied dreamily. She shook with silent laughter. It felt good to make _him_ stutter for once.

"I meant that fragrance. It's been driving me crazy all day." She took another whiff of it, then exhaled on a frustrated sigh that was almost a growl. She felt him shudder deliciously against her.

"All day?" he asked, swaying back so that he was lifting her off the door.

"_All day_."

She inhaled again, her fingers tangling in his soft hair as he carried her through the living room. "What _is_ it, Ren? Won't you tell me?"

"Something ... expensive, probably," he said unevenly, "not entirely ... sure."

"Oh. Well ... It's nice. More than nice. Kind of spicy, like ... cinnamon, maybe? Or some kind of mead, like a spiced wine? Whatever it is, it's ... Where are we going?"

"My room."

He said it just as they were crossing the threshold of his bedroom door. She writhed against him (whether in protest or anticipation she wasn't yet sure) as he placed her onto his bed. This tipped the scales in favor of anticipation as she once again brushed against that exciting part of him. Reacting out of an instinct she couldn't quite place, she wrapped her legs around his hips and drew him to her, rocking her hips against his just to feel him rock back with frustrated groan.

"Easy," he said with a calm that belied the hunger in his dark eyes and the rapid rise and fall of his chest, "there's no need to rush. We have all night."

"Y-you have to work tomorrow. And so do I!"

Ren disengaged and stretched out next to her, lying on his side with a smile. "I'll call in sick."

"You shouldn't - !"

"You're right, I shouldn't. But I'm going to. And in the meantime," he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her tight against him, "maybe I can convince you to do the same?"

She opened her mouth to protest, but could do little more than sigh when he started dropping kisses along her collarbone. She squirmed, tingling with awareness everywhere he touched her, but still determined to argue.

Disoriented by the magic of his lips, she spoke without thinking: "Does this mean you're done interrogating me?"

Ren looked down at her with a grin so sly it had to be criminal. ""Hardly. There's still so much I need to get out of you."

Her skin grew very pale. Then it flushed red.

"For instance?" she asked, almost too scared to find out.

"For instance ... "

He lunged forward and kissed her thoroughly then, catching her completely off-guard. She gasped, giving his tongue ample opportunity to stroke hers, drawing it into a coaxing duel. A liquid heat spread through her, pooling decadently between her legs. She gripped his shoulders, needing something, anything to hold onto. He pulled back suddenly.

"... how do you know Bo?"

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><p><strong>*Yes, that was indeed a Loretta Chase reference in the middle of Skip Beat! fanfic. Nigh impossible? I THINK <em>NOT<em>!**

**I'm almost tempted to end this right here, its so perfect.**

**... Almost being the operative word. My first ever lemon _without_ the lemon? Not a chance! **

**See you all soon, keep those reviews coming, they've really helped me nail down what I need to work on and what my strong suits are. ^^  
><strong>


	4. So Help Me, God

_disclaimer_: Nope ... still don't own Skip Beat!

**AN**: Took me seven goddamn months, but holy shit, y'all, it's finally LEMON TIME.

*_guzzles lemonade for no reason_*

Prepare for some of the most neurotic foreplay ever! Also, just so no one calls bullshit by the end of this chapter, I'll say it now: **There is sex ... but no intercourse**. I'm saving any and all potentially procreative acts (I say potentially because nobody gets knocked up on Van's watch!) for the next and final installment of _AKiSC/_

The POV is shared in this chapter. I didn't want to have to shift fully back in forth in order to get both of their perspectives.

* * *

><p><em><strong>So Help Me, God (Tickled Pink)<strong>_

* * *

><p>The next thing Ren knew, there was a pillow thrust in his face. He sighed, the sound muffled by the cushion. He hadn't really expected this to be easy. Still, it would have been nice to get a straight answer.<p>

Not nearly as exciting, not nearly as _Kyoko_ ... but nice.

"It's a simple question, Kyoko-chan," he said archly, his words audible and only slightly muffled even through the pillow.

"No, it isn't," she replied. "It _really_ isn't ... "

He plucked the pillow from her hands and tossed it towards the edge of the bed so quickly that her hands were still suspended in midair. He guided them back down to the comforter, pinning them gently just above her head and planted a searing kiss along the side of her jaw. She leaned into his lips like a cat rubbing against an accommodating hand. Her head resumed its spinning as his breath caressed her throat.

_Oh, God, if I start purring ..._

"Alright," he said softly against her skin before pulling away again, "then why do you call me Emperor?"

He watched her face turn so deeply crimson that he almost considered giving up his previous line of questioning in favor of this one. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the peculiar nickname had some sort of sexual significance to the girl. Ren was dying to know just what that significance entailed. She turned her head away, revealing that even her ears and neck were flushed pink. His curiosity, along with another key component, swelled.

"You have to answer one question or the other, I'm afraid. So pick one."

_Pick the second one, pick the second one, _he thought at her eagerly.

"Why do you want to know ... about Bo?"

_Damn. Alright, well, I'll come back to that later then. _

"Well, if he's been telling _other_ people things I've told him in confidence, I need to know so I don't go to the effort of battering and deep-frying him for nothing," he quipped.

She swallowed, not entirely certain whether the glint in his eye was playful or not. "D-deep-fry?"

"Mmm-hmm," he murmured, stroking her forehead with his thumb as he stared her down. "It's the one type of cooking I _can_ do."

"Perhaps I could ... introduce you," she said.

_Two reveals in one night, _she thought miserably_. How much of this can he stand?_

His brows knit together in confusion. "Really? You'd do that? When?"

"Uh ... How about right now?"

"Now? Why would ... Oh." Realization and disbelief dawned on his face. "Oh, no way..."

For lack of anything else to do, Kyoko lifted her hand and waved to him, despite him being only inches away. "Hello. Nice to meet you. Again. For the ... first ... time?"

At first he refused to believe her. Then she quoted back some of the things he had told Bo in confidence. Then she immediately launched into one of her trademark rants, disavowing any ulterior motives or ill intentions and claiming that she hadn't meant to deceive him because it had been at a time when she had had a false impression of him and yet he had needed someone to talk to and she would sooner throw herself to a pack of wolves than tell his secrets to anyone and she wasn't joking, she would really do it if he asked her to, if that was the only way to convince ... !

Whatever else she was about to say petered out into a squeak as Ren's face began to move closer to hers, his expression intense, but unreadable. She shut her eyes tight and braced herself for the scolding to end all scoldings, praying he wouldn't throw her out on her behind altogether.

About fifteen seconds that felt like whole centuries passed before she dared to open one eye. He was still hovering over her, but he was smiling. He shook his head slowly, the smile growing wider.

"You're the only one I know who can make long-winded rants seem sexy. Did you know that?"

Kyoko blinked rapidly in confusion, her mind effectively blown. " ... _EH?_"

"It's true. Your face gets so red and your eyes get really bright and glassy, like you might be about to cry, but you might also be about to fight, if you have to ... It's beautiful." He paused, brushing a bit of hair out of her eyes with a tender reverence she could feel down to the marrow of her bones. "_You're_ beautiful."

The word flicked her ego in a raw spot, and she turned away from his penetrating stare, shutting her eyes as a vindictive voice within began the familiar recitation of _Plain, boring, un-sexy_. "You don't have to, _aah_ ..."

_Oh, God, his tongue_, she thought deliriously as he laved her neck in swirling patterns, shutting up the cruel voice in her head. _He's ... Oh ..._

"What? _Lie_?" he whispered against her skin, wanting more than anything for his words to soak into her very being, to strike directly at the doubt and loathing he sensed in her. "I'm not. You'll be able to see it for yourself one of these days. Until then, I'm going to tell you and tell you until, at the very least, you believe _me_. And even then, I'll keep _on_ telling you, because it's true. You're beautiful ..."

"Tsuru ... R-Ren, sto -" Her protest was cut short by his mouth caressing her throat, continuing along the same path of goosebumps as before.

"Beautiful ..."

She shuddered at his praise, nearly overcome. "S-so you're not mad at me?"

"For being beautiful?" he asked with a wide-eyed innocence that didn't fool her in the least.

"About _Bo_! Remember Bo? We were just talking about this not two seconds before you ... " _Started licking me! _She never would have said it aloud, but the thought was there between them all the same.

He grinned. "No, I'm not mad. You were trying to help me. And you succeeded, I might add. If it weren't for Bo's advice, I doubt we would have made it to this moment."

"Really? How so?"

"Don't you remember? '_Seduce her with all your might'_? That may well have been what gave me the gall to bring you up here."

She slapped her hands over her reddening face. "I only said that because I thought you were dealing with a _mature_ sixteen. Someone who could handle something like that."

"So you don't think you can handle me?"

"I-I'd certainly be willing to tr - _Oh, for crying out loud!_" she shrieked when she caught a glimpse of his laughing face through her fingers. "Me and my big mouth ... It's the hammer incident all over again!"

"Speaking of which -"

She reached up and covered his mouth with her hands. "Let's not and say we did!"

He laughed against her fingers, then began to kiss them.

"You're _really_ not mad?"

He pretended to dwell on it for a moment. "No, just mildly paranoid. How many other people in my life are going to unmask themselves and turn out to be you?" He squinted at her in mock suspicion. "You're not hiding Yashiro in there somewhere, are you?"

She shook beneath him with laughter. "I guess you'll have to wait and find out!" she said through her chortles.

"You're so cute when you laugh," he said in a curiously dreamy voice. He sat mesmerized by the pink glow warming her cheeks and the way her chestnut hair fanned out against his sheets like a muted flame.

She trembled ever so slightly as he ran his fingers up her side. "A-are you _sure _... ?"

He shut his eyes, trying not to laugh too hard as he touched his forehead to hers. "_Kyoko_ ..."

"I'm _sorry_, I just - !"

He pulled back slightly, shaking his head at her. "Would you _rather_ I be angry?"

"N-no, of course not, it's just really unexpected that you _aren't_. It would put me at ease ... Wait, no, it _wouldn't_, what am I _saying_?"

"I'm wondering. It makes you sound like some sort of masochist."

She raised her eyebrows and shifted her gaze contemplatively over his shoulder. Ren's eyes widened slightly. "What? Are you?"

"I've never really thought about it." She shifted her golden gaze back to his. "Till just this moment, anyway ..."

They stared into each other's eyes for quite a while, neither of them knowing how to process what she had just said. Kyoko shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of his scrutiny, brushing against the weight of ... well, _him_ in the process. A searing heat fanned out through her skin at the slight contact. He watched as her eyes grew slightly unfocused, her lips pursing in wonder and anticipation.

_Mine. She's all mine now .._.

The feeling of primal ownership that surged forth in him was strong enough to give him pause. And the sudden image of Shou Fuwa's smug face flashed into his mind, effectively negating his libido and coldly re-enabling his rationality. Ren suddenly wanted to kick himself. Hard. How big a fool was he? Hadn't she had enough of that kind of rank possessiveness the first time around? And what made him think he could just take advantage of her like this? She hadn't _been_ with anyone before, so of course she wasn't going out of her way to stop him. These feelings were new to her, after all ... Naturally, she was curious ... Pliant ...

His teeth clenched._ What in the hell were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Jesus Christ, Kuon, you're not Bluebeard. You can't just - !  
><em>

It was at this point that Kyoko made the same restless movement. This time her thigh slid much more firmly against the length of hardening member. His body gave a slight lurch, too surprised and titillated to fully control the movement. He drew himself up.

_Alright then. That's enough torture for one night.  
><em>

He flashed her a smile that felt like a grimace etched across his face. "It's gotten so late. Guess I better get you home, then."

As close as she was, she couldn't miss the pain that forcing himself to say this caused him. The thought of just leaving him by himself didn't sit well with her. Her mind kicked into overdrive as he pulled away, seeming in slow motion in comparison to the swiftness with which she took his measure.

Where before her insecurity might have led her believe she had somehow committed some faux pas, she was seeing much more clearly. And what she was seeing was all the times in the past when they had, through some twist of fate or another, gotten into this same kind of close proximity, when she'd seen that same pain flash in his eyes. She saw these times in a new light, taking into account not only that he had loved her even then, but that some dark tragedy in his past had been at least part of why he had restrained himself.

Just as he was restraining himself now.

_This isn't about me at all. He thinks he can't be trusted. He doesn't trust himself._

Before she could stop to get a hold of herself, she had a hold of him, her fingers reaching out to grasp the edge of his shirt as he began to sit up. The plan was formed and her resolve stronger than iron, even as some small part of her wailed in shock at her own audacity.

"Don't!"

He blinked. _What?_

She took her hand off of him and tried to settle down, even as her heart pounded. "I mean, um ... can't I ... stay?"

"Stay?" _This isn't happening, _he thought. _She can't have just asked to stay. _"Why?"

"I don't want to leave you." The acute longing in her own voice would have sickened her before. She didn't even flinch.

He just blinked down at her, not moving or saying a word.

She blinked back and pushed onward. "Aaaand, uh, I don't want to disturb the Taisho and Okami-san by traipsing in after dark. So ... it might be best if ... I stay."

Ren folded his arms over his chest. "Won't they worry if you don't turn up till morning?"

Her face lit up like a slot machine. "No, of course not! They'll think I'm staying at Moko-san's house! We were going there anyway to run more of her lines, before ... well, before you abducted me."

He sighed. "Kyoko, you aren't obligated ... that is, you don't _have_ to -"

"But I _want_ to stay! I want to stay with you."

He felt something loosen in his chest then, a tightness he hadn't been fully aware of until he felt its absence. She trusted him enough to want to stay. She trusted _him_. The weight of that trust settled around him, warm and comforting. He took a deep, steady breath and uncrossed his arms.

"Of course," he said softly, "you can stay. I'll just be a minute."

He turned and began to walk towards the door when he heard her next words:

"You're not banishing me to the guest room, are you?"

Ren froze, then slowly turned back around to face her. _Where exactly were you planning on sleeping?_

"No, not banishing. I just ... thought you'd like some privacy."

_After you kissed me like that? _she almost asked, incredulous at the shift from warm-blooded lover to the reserved gentleman before her.

"The bed is right under the air vent, you know," she said, staring down at her feet, "I'll bet it gets really drafty in there." She looked up and met his gaze squarely, her face much too still and her gaze almost eerily intense. Then her eyes softened to a liquid heat that threatened to dissolve him into a puddle on his bedroom floor.

"I get cold so easily, Ren-kun ... "

A different kind of tightness seized his chest then, squeezing his heart in a steely grip; sweat began to collect at his hairline.

As a bit of panic began to creep past the initial shock, his own mind kicked into overdrive. He had already said he wouldn't take her home, so he couldn't go back on that even if he wanted to (which he certainly didn't, despite knowing better). She didn't want to go to the guest room, and he sure as hell wasn't about to suggest she sleep on the couch ...

_How far are you willing to take this? _he asked silently.

"So, the guest room's out ..." he said, feigning a convincingly casual tone as he stuck his hands in his pockets and returned her stare, "what do you want to do then?"

She lifted her chin at him, recognizing the challenge he posed her. She very deliberately sat down on the edge of his bed, confirming both his worst nightmare and his fondest dream in that one gesture. She pinned him with those golden eyes, intent and unwavering.

"I told you. I want to stay. With you."

_Meaning, you'll be mad if **I** take the guest bed,_ he realized, feeling both beyond elated and utterly trapped.

"... If that's alright with you," she added, realizing just how demanding she sounded.

"Ah ... well. If you like. It's fine by me."

She smile in blatant triumph, unbalancing him further. "Thank you. Could I borrow one of your shirts? This one isn't long enough to sleep in."

The thought of her trundling about in one of his shirts produced a lump in his throat the size of a boulder. He swallowed hard and walked over to his dresser. He fished a handful of fabric out of the second drawer and handed it over without really looking at it or her. She thanked him sweetly and disappeared into his bathroom, trying and utterly failing not to find his nerves absolutely adorable. She closed the door behind her and slid off her black gakuran.

Out in the bedroom, Ren stared down into his open dresser drawer far too intensely. He couldn't do pajamas. They were all too easily removable. He couldn't get into bed with her wearing something he could easily yank aside. Not when she was just in his shirt ... Wait, she _would_ be wearing underwear, too, obviously. No, it was still too risky. He settled on a soft cotton shirt, the fabric breathable enough that it wouldn't trouble his sleep. He kept his pants on, then started to undo his belt. Then thought better of it and left it alone.

_It's no chastity belt, but it'll have to do ..._

"Oh, um ... Ren?"

The sound of his name floating through the half-open door may well have been a phantom hand caressing his skin. He felt her voice with every inch of him as a feeling of bliss both stoked his anxiety and crowded it out.

"Y ..." He cleared his throat, appalled at the barely audible squeak that just came out of him. "Yes, Kyoko?"

"Could I borrow those scissors again? I can't seem to get out of my bindings."

For one very deranged second, he thought this was her way saying that she felt trapped and wanted to leave. All the air left his lungs in that moment, and his heart threatened to shatter his sternum.

_Bindings? What, I was just ... Oh. _

She was talking about her chest; it was still bound from her turn as Kyoichi. The fact that her breasts were bound flat had slipped his mind ... Somehow.

"Okay," he called back.

He walked back down the hallway to his office, feeling like the biggest fool to ever walk the earth. His pulse was still running so high that he was almost certain she could hear it all the way back in his bathroom. He got the scissors off the desk and returned. He knocked on the door, despite it already being slightly open.

"Come in," she said. He did ... and tried not to dash his brains out against the door frame as the urge to swoon hit in full force.

His shirt, still neatly folded, sat on the marble counter-top just by the sink. Next to it was the black gakuran and the white tee she had had on under it.

And right smack in front of him was a - for all intents and purposes - shirtless Kyoko Mogami. Save for the white bandaging around her chest, she was topless before him. She smiled sweetly, as if daring him to find even the slightest hint of self-consciousness. He swallowed discreetly, careful to keep his eyes on her face and not let them stray elsewhere.

She turned away, presenting her back to him. "I hate to bother you again, but ... do you suppose you could cut them for me? My hands are so unsteady."

Ren had to consciously loosen his sudden death-grip on the scissors in his hand.

Now he _knew_ she was doing it on purpose! Her hand hadn't even shaken when she'd cut the bandaging off her tattoo, so this _had_ to be a lie. And not even one to be believed, if the overtly, almost apologetically sweet tone of her voice and the almost but not quite imperceptible furrow of her brow was any indication: She wanted him to see her. He knew it. She knew it.

Kyoko blinked placidly over her shoulder at his hesitation, stomping down her second thoughts with the sheer force of her own determination. "You don't mind, do you?"

He stared down at her. This was no cunning seductress before him. Though she hid her nerves remarkably, he could still sense them just beneath the surface. She _was_ shaking, just a bit, but she wasn't about to back down.

_She trusts you, you moron. She thinks you can be trusted. So help me God, if you prove her wrong ..._

"Not if you don't."

She turned away once more. He carefully wedged the scissors under her bandaging, creeping up her spine with each snip. With one finally cut, the stacks of cloth opened like a corset. She cradled them to her chest. For that he was eternally grateful. He started to step away, then got distracted by her back.

"They left marks." He traced one of the red indents with his finger and was perversely gratified when he felt her quiver just a little at his touch.

"Bad ones?"

He shook his head. "No ... They'll fade soon enough. You might have just wrapped them too tight."

"Oh, good. I mean, that they'll fade ..."

"Yeah ... "

"I wouldn't want you to have to look at them."

_So you plan to have your skin bare for me a lot, then?_

Before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned down to her, planting a hand onto her bare stomach to draw her back against him.

"I wouldn't mind," he whispered.

"Oh ... good."

In that moment, he was painfully aware of just how much his presence seemed to have an almost drugging effect on her. He could tell: it was the same effect she had on him. This was a dangerous game they played, and he damn well knew it. But he had only to feel the silky touch of her skin against his hand, to feel the heat coming off of her ... This was going to be a long night.

"I should ... probably let you get dressed now."

"Probably ..."

Ren didn't budge. Neither did Kyoko.

He groaned inwardly. _Why? Wasn't it enough that I torture myself, Kyoko-chan? Do you have to join in as well?_

That was unfair, and he knew it. It was his own damn fault if he couldn't control himself. He held onto her for another few seconds, clinging to her warmth as though he were about to go face a blizzard, and then very slowly took his hand off of her and straightened ... Only to lean back down for a split-second to give her a quick peck on the cheek before fleeing the bathroom, shutting the door with a bit too more force than necessary behind him.

_Christ, you're hopeless ..._

Kyoko swayed slightly in Ren's absence. It was like being drunk all over again, only without the constant sense of seasickness. _Really, though. Who needs alcohol when there's Ren Tsuruga? Goodness ..._

With a chagrin that bordered on shame, she realized that she had grown very slick between her legs. She hoped to God he wouldn't be able to smell it. Then realized that he just might if she was going to be sleeping in his shirt and no underwear the way she planned. Maybe she should keep them on ...

_No. I either do this right, or not at all! There can't be any barriers between us tonight. He has to see that he can resist temptation ... Or ... maybe give into it just a little ... without going over the line.  
><em>

She slid the burgundy tank over her head, shivering slightly as the soft fabric caressed her skin. It swung to about mid-thigh. She took a deep breath and slid her pants and then her underwear off. She folded the white cotton into a triangle and sandwiching it between the shirt and the gakuran.

_Are you an idiot, girl? _a part of her shrieked. She ignored it and stepped back out in the bedroom. He wasn't there, so she scrambled into bed, clad she didn't have to make some sort of grand entrance in his shirt. There was only so much she could take, even feeling as determined as she was. She slid under the covers and waited for him.

About five minutes later, he came back and shut the door behind him.

"Where'd you go?" she asked, then flinched at how possessive she sounded.

He smiled. "Just turning off the rest of the house lights."

"Oh. Right."

He slid under the covers, as far away from her as he could get without seeming obvious, and switched off the light at his bedside table.

"Good night, Kyoko," he whispered in the dark, somehow finding himself nearly at the opposite edge of the bed anyway.

"Good night, Ren," she whispered back.

_Won't be long now, _they thought in near-perfect unison as the silence stretched on, punctuated only by their poor attempts as slow, steady breathing.

Approximately four minutes later, the shivering began.

He could feel her shaking all the way on his side of the bed. So her nerves had finally gotten the best of her. He wasn't sure whether to be saddened or relieved at her imminent departure.

He reached out to tap her, to get her attention, so he could get her home where she belonged.

Only to find a quivering block of ice where where once there had been warm, yielding flesh.

His eyes widened in the dark. "You really _do_ get cold easily."

She giggled slightly. "P-poor circulation. I get it s-sometimes."

He retracted his hand, relieved to know he wasn't the cause of her shivers and praying he wouldn't go straight to Hell for what he was about to suggest.

"If you'd like to ... you know ... slide over - _Oof!_"

She was plastered against his side before he could even finish making the suggestion, nearly hurtling across the gap between them.

The cool touch of her flesh was a shock to his system, even as it quickly warmed in response to him. He was painfully aware of how little his shirt covered her. He'd had the misfortune to pick out a sleeveless tank that didn't reach her knees. Her cleavage bracketed his arm. Her bare thigh slid against his clothed one, the heat of it scalding him even through the relatively dense fabric.

"Warm yet?" he asked after a few agonizing minutes.

_Why the hell are you asking that? What, you're going to let her get warm and then push her back to the other side of the bed? Right. Sure.  
><em>

"Mmm-hmm. You're like a furnace." She snuggled closer, setting off firestorms of lust and anxiety when she managed to burrow under his arm. She chuckled, perhaps a bit unsteadily. "That's a funny image. Ren Tsuruga ... My own personal furnace."

He felt his muscles relaxing despite himself. He brushed his lips against the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair and something else he couldn't quite identify, but seemed familiar nonetheless. "I'm glad I could be of some assistance."

The low voice did strange things to Kyoko's gut, but she soldiered on - towards what exactly, she wasn't yet sure. She tilted her head back to look at his dim outline in the darkness. The tip of her pert nose grazed his cheek. An answering shiver ran down his back. "Aren't you always?"

_It isn't ... a bad smell. Why is it so familiar ... ? _

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She chuckled. "You didn't seem like the type to fish for compliments, Tsu ... _Ren_. But if you must know ... you're always there for me. Even when you're not really there beside me ... I think of you in the midst of my mind's chaos and then there is order. You're solid like that. Sturdy."

"I'm glad," he said, daring to tighten his arm around her ever so slightly.

"Do you ... usually sleep with your belt still on?"

He grimaced. "Only when I have unexpected guests."

"You _are_ the one who brought me here, remember? How unexpected was this, really?"

He snorted. "Well, I wasn't _planning_ on you sleeping over ... I mean, the hope that you would someday was always in the back of my mind, but I never really counted on it. I'm not quite the seducer you seem to think I am, Kyoko-chan."

She very deliberately shifted, pressing more fully against him, very nearly on top of him at this point. "You seem to be getting along just fine."

He sighed. "You can be so merciless, you know that? I know what you're doing, you know. Needling me like this is dangerous."

"I'm in no danger with you, Ren," she murmured with absolute confidence, "And if I am ... "

"If you are ... ?" he asked, almost scared to know.

"Then I'll have to get dangerous right back, won't I?" she said with enough self-assurance to put Natsu to shame.

He bit back a growl at her provocative tone. "You shouldn't say such daring things to me ..."

"Well, I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea. Not ... now."

He became very still in that moment. He recognized what that smell was, the knowledge striking him with all the force of a speeding vehicle. And ... that was pretty much it for holding back.

"What would the right idea be, Kyoko-chan?"

Her eyes opened wide in the darkness.

The question was a grenade, shattering Kyoko's boldness as easily as it would a wineglass. He had her there: She _didn't_ know what she was asking of him. She didn't know what _she_ wanted out of this night. She only knew that the wanting was there, flowing like a dark current under her good intentions. It pinned her to his side even as her resolve fled. It warmed her from the inside like a bed of hot coals even as the cold reality of her own cowardice threatened to make her sick right then and there.

Fortunately for her, Ren seemed to know what he was doing.

"Hmm?" he prompted, shifting ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly. "Well?"

_Oh, God, he wants an answer. Quick think of something. Think. _"U ... u-um ... I ... "

Light poured slowly - so slowly Kyoko thought she was imagining it - into the room, blooming next to the entwined couple. Eventually there was just enough light for her to see that Ren had reached over to the dimmer switch on his bedside table, turning the dial ever so slowly. Just enough for her to cringe at her provocative pose, her body cleaved to his in a way that seemed shockingly desperate. More importantly, there was just enough to see him.

To see him staring down at her. Patiently. Expectantly.

And with the Emperor's smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Hmm ... what do you want, Kyoko-chan? What's the right idea? What is it you want me to do?"

"I ... I don't know ... I just ..."

"Hmm?" The smile widened, serene and predatory and loving all at once.

"I w-want ... "

"Is it to go home?"

She answered quickly enough, but her face was mashed against his chest. He placed his fingers under her chin and tilted until her gaze met his, revealing that even in the dim light he could see her blush plain as day.

"What was that?" he said, letting his fingers slide gently under her chin.

"... No."

"Is it to talk?"

The time for talk was long past, and they both knew it. "No ..."

He glanced a bit lower, noting that she hadn't even tried to pull away from him. Not once. "Is it to stay so close to me, Kyoko-chan?"

"I was thinking ... "

"Yes?"

"... maybe a bit ... closer?" _That makes no SENSE. How much CLOSER can I BE?_

He slid his arms around her waist, hoisting her up along his body until they were eye to eye. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, clinging for dear life against the firestorm that sprang to life inside her as the fabric at her back bunched over his arm, exposing her bare behind to the open air.

"And how might we make that happen? We're so close already ... Do you know how close we are, Kyoko-chan?"

"H-how close are we?" _I don't think I want to know the punchline to this joke ..._

His lips brushed against her ear as he whispered, "I can smell how wet you are. That's how close we are."

Kyoko's blood roared in her ears as her pulse skyrocketed. She shuddered against him without an ounce of fear. And that in itself was scary. That she was loving every minute of this teasing inquisition even as a panic attack seemed imminent. That she was ready to do god-knows-what if he so much as asked her to ...

"If it's ... b-bothering you - " she began.

He chuckled low and deep. The sound rolled through her like the distant echo of thunder. "Why would it bother me? It shows that you want me the way I want you. That could never bother me ..."

"O-oh ... good. I wouldn't want ... to ... U-um, what's wrong?" she asked, noting that his piercing gaze had finally left her face in favor of something else.

"You're not wearing underwear."

A few tense moments passed this statement.

"... Does _that_ bother you?" she muttered somewhat petulantly against his chest.

A few _more_ tense moments passed. The next thing she knew, the dimly lit room spun before her eyes, and she was lying on her back, looking at the ceiling. Then he arched over her once again, close enough for his silky hair to tickle her face.

"Maybe a little bit," he growled against her cheek. "Why aren't you wearing underwear?"

Her nerve came back with a vengeance, giving an extra but thoroughly unneeded boost to her libido along the way. "They didn't seem ... necessary."

Lightning quick, he nudged her legs apart with his knee and slid his long fingers against her slick entrance. She gasped at the scalding contact. Then emitted a long, long sigh as two of those graceful fingers slipped easily inside her, igniting jagged little bolts of lighting within that raced out from her womanhood to the tips of her fingers and toes, then back again in an infinite loop of blissful torment.

"Is this what you wanted, Kyoko-chan?" he whispered sweetly from somewhere above her. Her eyes were shut in pleasure and some residual shock. "Is this why they _didn't seem necessary_?"

"Uhhmm ..." She rolled her hips as she twisted back slightly, exacerbating the sensation.

"Then why are you wriggling around, hmm? Like you're trying to get away ..." He was at once gently mocking and crushingly sincere. He steadied her by using his other hand to clench her right hip. The fingers dug firmly into the flesh of her buttock, guiding her back down against his probing fingers.

He leaned over her, spellbound by the unraveling nymph beneath him. He didn't want to miss a moment of her bliss. And it _was_ bliss. There was no denying that she enjoyed this. And in that moment, and in every moment to come, that was enough for him. He could have her without having her. He could toe the line without crossing it. He could give her something in return for all that she had given him.

_Brilliant_, a very small, skeptical part of him hissed. _Let's see you stick to that then, you animal ..._

"I-I'm _not_," she protested feverishly, "I just ... can't seem to ... keep still. I'm sor ... _Uuh_!"

She cried out as his fingers took up a new angle, curving upwards against a particularly volatile spot inside of her. She covered her mouth, embarrassed by the noises coming out of it. He reached up and pried her hand loose. He kissed it before pinning it by the wrist to his mattress.

"I want to hear you. Every sound you make, I want to hear."

Her answer was to bite down on her lower lip, cutting off a strangled gasp.

"Don't be stingy, Kyoko-chan. Let me hear you."

Ren shifted so that he was lying next to her on his side. He slid his arm under her, arching her back slightly as he gripped her midsection with one hand and continued to drive her crazy with the other. Eventually she couldn't close her mouth at all, the pleasure too acute to allow for such a thing. Depraved sounds poured from her, and she had neither the wish nor the will to stop them.

"Much better," he whispered. He kissed her cheek in the most tauntingly chaste way. She let out a gasp as she felt her internal muscles clench around his fingers. It was only once, but it was a hard enough squeeze for the both of them to feel it.

It was at this moment that Ren stopped altogether. Suddenly, his fingers were gone and he was sliding away from her side.

She fought down the sudden and inexplicable urge to yank him back to her by his hair. Her fingers contorted into claws before she got a hold of herself.

"Wh-what are you _doing_?" she wailed, not even caring how shrill she sounded.

He growled his reply against her womanhood, bracing her parted thighs up onto his shoulders: "Drinking of your divinity."

She started to sit up a little. She opened her mouth, perhaps to ask why he was quoting her or what he meant by what he said. What ended up coming out was a startled gasp that mellowed into a cry positively aching with lyricism when she felt his mouth nestling against her slick folds. It sang in his blood like a siren song, tethering him between her legs as effectively as a chain.

_This is where I was meant to be, _he thought deliriously. _This is where I will stay._

Kyoko's body hummed like it was running on some kind of generator. Many wild thoughts blazed through her mind, getting less and less coherent: _C-can he breathe like that? How long can he stay down ... Oooh, God, what is ... What do I ... How ... ? _

His tongue licked into her, slipping deftly into the wet, fleshy petals. He dragged his tongue across the distended nub of her clitoris, using as much force as he felt he could get away with and was immensely gratified to see her come almost entirely off the bed in response, her back arching as her hips pushed harder into his face. The smell of her was intoxication itself, at once pungent and sweet. He opened his eyes just in time to see her stomach ripple, her lower body rolling.

"P-lease ..." she whimpered. "Ah, God, please, Tsuruga-saaaan ..."

He took her clit firmly between his lips and just as promptly let it go in a smacking kiss. Her thighs quivered against his face, and he heard her gulp back a sob. "There's nobody here by that name, Kyoko-chan."

"_Please, Ren!_" she groaned.

_That name either,_ he almost said before grabbing the tail end of his common sense. This _definitely_ wasn't the time to go into that.

"Please what?" he asked, his fingers taking up the same rhythm his tongue had a moment before. "What do you need?"

"M-mercy," she gasped, writhing against his touch in a way that guaranteed her very little.

He twisted his fingers inside in a corkscrew motion. She nearly came out of her skin right there. He lunged back up from between her thighs and whispered in her ear:

"You had none for me, Kyoko-chan. There will be none for you."

_Oh, God, yes, _she thought insanely. "Y-yes, bu-but ..."

"Mmm-mmm," he said, diving back down to the pungent petals of her sex, "none for you."

She groaned low and deep, acknowledging but not protesting the lack of mercy. She drew back, but not nearly hard enough to dislodge his tongue. And as if to emphasize his lack of pity, he kept his tongue on her clit and began to stroke inside her with his fingers, all the while holding her hip in place with his unoccupied hand.

In a matter of moments, she felt something like an apocalypse building inside her. She held it back with what little she had left, knowing that her release would utterly trounce the few she had managed to give herself furtively in the past. She arched up as resistance became impossible, letting the wave break over her. She nearly crushed him with her thighs, hardly aware of herself or him or anything except the magnificent spasms wracking her body.

And still he kept on, riding out the waves of her climax until he was sure he had wrung every last drop from her. He swallowed the nectar seeping gently from her swollen walls, delirious enough in that moment to imagine it was some kind of ambrosia.

His cock throbbed in protest as he untangled himself from between her legs, harder than it had ever been and straining for release against his trousers. He held onto the knowledge that he had given her pleasure without demanding she give him a thing. He had not been selfish. Her trust in him had not been in vain.

_Yes_, he thought as he wiped his face with the back of his arm.

"Sleep, now ..." he whispered.

She clung to the edge of consciousness, her eyelids dropping. "But ... You didn't ... I haven't ... We ..."

"Shhhh ..."

Kyoko let go of the edge and sank into the deepest sleep she had ever had.

_**. . . . .**_

The moment Ren awoke the next morning, he rolled out of bed, went into the bathroom and took out his contact lenses. He flushed them down the toilet and watched them circle the porcelain bowl before going back into the bedroom.

He took a deep breath, dropped to his knees at the edge of the bed and waited for Kyoko to wake up.

It began with a leonine yawn and a full-body stretch that wound him up the way an expertly performed striptease never could or would. It continued with the achingly slow roll of her hips and her shoulders against his sheets, the popping of her bones as she continued to stretch making him flinch slightly.

She startled slightly at the sight of him at the edge of the bed, then smiled when she remembered where she was. Then she got a better look at him as sleepiness fled her vision and immediately looked horrified.

"Oh, God, that face ... Don't make that face! Please, Ren ..."

He blinked. He had underestimated her heightened intuition. She knew something big was coming, even though he had fought to keep his face at least somewhat neutral.

"You have bad news, don't you?" Her eyes got even wider as something even more awful seemed to occur to her. "Last night wasn't a dream, was it? That happened, right? We .. W-we ... Hey, wait ..."

She crawled closer to him, eyes fixed on his. "Your eyes. Ren, why are your eyes ... ?"

"I threw away my contacts. I'll never wear them again. I need to be able to see you through my eyes. And I need you to know who I really am. Even if you decide you never want to see or hear from me again after what I have to tell you ... I need you to know."

Kyoko blinked and sat back on her heels on his bed, dreading the worst. "I'm listening."

He told her everything. He began at the end, deciding it was best to work backwards in time, hopefully to soften the revelation that her fairy prince had turned into ... Well, him. He spared her not a single detail.

His parents. His time with her. America. The abuse he had suffered therein. The abuse he had dished out in return.

Rick.

Everything.

He watched her face settle from the initial shock to an eery composure, those golden eyes hard and unyielding as diamonds as she processed everything he had told her.

Then watched in abject horror as she climbed off the bed, slipping past him as though he weren't even there, and went into the bathroom. She returned in a matter of moments, dressed in drag once more, save for her bandaging. She fixed him with that diamond-hard look, her eyes betraying not a single emotion. Not a single ounce of hope.

"You should get dressed. We have work to do. I'll be waiting at the car."

He watched her walk out his bedroom door. He heard his front door slam behind her.

And Kuon Hizuri sank fully to the ground as he felt the world end for him.

_Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it ..._

* * *

><p><strong>Eeek! My first lemon, you guys! AAAAH TELL ME WHATCHA THINK! I don't know why, but I feel like I'm only really especially proud of Ren's internal monologues. The way he beats himself up, I feel like I nailed it. But that's not up to me, is it? What did you guys thinks?<br>**

**Next chapter will be the last and even more hot and lemon-y than this one. Like with actual intercourse and all that good stuff, just as I promised! Also, more Skip Beat fics are in the works.  
><strong>

**Also, I intentionally left out Ren's eye color because I couldn't decide what color they should be. Going by Nakuamura-sensei's promotional color art: Brown is the color that Ren Tsuruga uses. As Corn/Kuon, they seem to be either green or blue (no one seems to be able to agree on this one). And as the elder Heel sibling, he has gray contacts that match Setsu's.  
><strong>

**What color should I go with? I'll leave it to you for now, then decide.  
><strong>


	5. Do You Swear? (Part 1)

_disclaimer_: Nakamura Yoshiki is the creative mind behind this wonderful series. I am but her humble stan.

**AN (important shit)**: Just to be clear, Kuon still goes by Ren Tsuruga to the public, and he isn't reverting back to blond hair anytime soon (mostly because that would have been too much for his fans to process, it would have made him look too much like Kuu and because I happen to like him with dark hair).

I settled on **emerald green** for his eye color, though with the decision to keep his hair dark, blue might have been just as striking.

Depending on the POV (and again, it will be _third person omniscient_), Kuon will **either be called "Kuon" or "Ren"**, depending on who knows about his real name. So in Kyoko's POV, he is Kuon (though she would call him Ren in public for the sake of secrecy). Kanae, however, would still know him by his stage name. I hope that's clear, because there's a lot of bouncing between his names in the first part of this chapter.

This **chapter is being split into two parts** because it was a pain in the ass to edit (at 12,000+ words by its damn self). The next one will be along shortly as it's already written, I swear, it just needs some edits.

Be advised: The first part of this chapter skews heavily towards Angst, but it gradually turns back around, so don't worry, it'll be over before you know it. I do it because I love you. The truly M-rated stuff is in the next chapter, this ones mostly comedy and fluff due to me splitting the chapter.

Alright, that's enough chatter.

Let's bring this show to its (almost) finale.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Do You Swear? (Part 1)<strong>_

* * *

><p>They rode to the darumaya in a silence Kuon didn't try to break. He wasn't sure if he was able to form words or not, or if the miasma of hurt within would reduce him to incoherent sobs if he even dared open his mouth. He couldn't ever remember feeling this way, not even as a child lost in a strange capital, not even as an outcast among racist rivals.<p>

_Get a grip, Kuon. You're better than this. Even if she never wants to see you again -  
><em>

His knuckles turned white as his grip on the steering wheel tightened. It was all he could do to keep the car going straight. He couldn't even complete the thought, much less process the reality of it. She was done. It had been plain as day on her face. She was done with him. No more of her rambling tangents. No more runway strut tutorials. No more crossdressing misadventures. No more of her skin flushing hot against his.

It was all done.

_One foot in front of the other. Do what you always do. Paint a smile on your face and bear it._

He tried to do just that, scraping through his mind for something smooth and wise to say that would tie a ribbon around all this. Nothing came forth, not even the hollow smile he had perfected over the years. The mask was not merely lost to him, but completely destroyed.

The darumya came into view. Once they were parked, he waited for her to get out, staring straight out of the windshield. When she didn't move, he started to get out himself, trying not to dwell on this being the last time he would ever hand her out of his car.

Her hand struck out and clutched his arm. He stayed where he was and finally looked over at her. That bleak, awful look was gone. There was only the concern, the compassion, that was so intrinsic to her nature.

"Your eyes are one thing," she said evenly. "If you choose to change them back, I won't hold you to the promise you made. And I won't say a word about your name, your past ... Anything. It stays between us, you have my word."

Kuon tried to think, but couldn't with her hand on him and her voice so sweet by his side. The wheels were definitely turning upstairs, but words weren't forthcoming. This was the same woman who had sworn holy vengeance against the last man to disappoint her. And yet she spoke to the likes of him with such gentleness. What of that look on her face before then? What was happening?

"That ... is what you want, isn't it?"

He said the first words his mind could grasp: "If you want to call me by my real name where others can hear, then I won't object."

"... Have you lost your mind?" she asked incredulously.

_Probably._ "I don't care, Kyoko. I really don't. If you told my secrets to the world from the moment you stepped out of this car, I wouldn't even blink. I may have wanted to wait until I was ready to go back to the States, but if you don't, I won't care. It's not important. Not anymore."

She was completely and utterly speechless. He seized this opportunity to do something he had meant to do under better circumstances. She blinked rapidly at his actions, coming out of her shock to watch him pull his key out of the ignition and then work another key off of the ring. He handed it to her, green eyes beseeching.

"Take this with you. Please. Even if you don't ever use it, I want you to have it with you."

She stared at the key in her palm, the metal of it glinting like gold in the morning light.

"Your house key?"

"It's my original. I have a spare. I always hoped I'd be able to give it to you." He didn't even try to mask the raw sadness in his voice.

Her head whipped up from the key as she seemed to realize something, her gaze squarely on him. She was silent for a moment. She pocketed the key, much to his relief. Then she placed her hand on his left cheek, guiding his head towards her so that she could gently kiss his right. He wanted to break down right then and there at the touch of those soft lips and the hopeless finality that washed over him like waves threatening to pull him under.

"So this is goodbye."

He said it with as much neutrality as he could muster. Which wasn't very much at all.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her nodding, and his heart continued to plummet.

"For now," she whispered.

He froze. "For now?"

"_Only_ for now. I couldn't leave you if I tried, Kuon -"

He inhaled sharply at the sound of his name rolling so easily, so gently, off her tongue. She didn't spit it at him like an insult. Coming from her, it was like a prayer, a thing of beauty. And yet there was so little emphasis, as though saying it were as natural as breathing. How she did that, he would probably never know, but he loved her for it.

"- but we need to be apart. For a while. There are ... things I need to sort out. But know that I'm not abandoning you. I could never do such a thing, even if I wanted to. And I don't want to. I could never want to."

Relief exploded in his chest, very nearly shattering his heart anew even as it began to stitch itself back together. He exhaled shakily. "You scared me. I thought ... back there you were so -"

She pressed her fingers to his lips, seeming to fear whatever he was about to say. "It's my own fault, I know. I just -"

"No, it was mine," he insisted. "I shouldn't have sprung all of this on you the way I did. Especially not after ..."

"It's alright. Really. It'll be alright," she reassured him quietly, her cheek pressed into the curve of his neck as she held him.

"How you must have hurt ..." she murmured softly. She seemed to say it more to herself than to him, but he felt how much her heart broke for him in that moment. He didn't reach up to touch or hold her. He knew if he did, he wouldn't be able to pry himself loose. So he sat there and basked the warmth of her embrace, daring only to gently rub his cheek against her chestnut hair.

He felt her slide something into his hand. His fingers closed around it, knowing instinctively what it was and what it meant. The stone in his hand still held her body's warmth, and he clung to it like his very life depended on it. And in a way, in that moment, it did.

"I'm going now," she said, sliding away with a reluctance to rival his own.

The door slammed soundly in her wake. He watched her walk away, never once looking back at him. And she was gone.

_How did she leave me without leaving me? _he thought.

He slammed his forehead down onto the top of his steering wheel, emotionally exhausted.

_... With her, even a simple goodbye is a Zen riddle. *_

_**. . .**_

A month, a week and four days passed since that ride home, the most agonizing Kuon Hizuri could ever remember spending.

A month, a week and four days in which his green eyes were the subject of _many_ discussions.

Several variations of the following conversation occurred between himself and the directors who had the misfortune of addressing the minor but noticeable continuity error that his new eye color created:

"Any chance of you changing, er ... ?" An awkward wave of the hand at his face.

"No."

"... Okay."

He was fortunate enough not to lose any of his roles with this flat, consistent refusal, and that his eye color was best addressed by simply ignoring it, since his eyes tended to be irrelevant to the plots of whatever drama or commercial he was in. In fact, his eyes had been the impetus behind his newest engagement: a cologne endorsement wherein his image was in sepia but the bottle in his coat pocket was blazing gold and his eyes were similarly in vibrant Technicolor, shining like cut emeralds.

He passed the billboard on his way home every day that third week of exile. He hoped Kyoko saw it. There was no reason she wouldn't or, indeed, couldn't. And he knew it was selfish to want his image near enough for her to dwell on him as he did on her.

Still, he hoped.

Tabloids concocted seemingly endless reasons for "Ren Tsuruga's" new eye color, citing everything from a congenital disease to a new film project to some sort of (premature) midlife crisis; screenshots and candid photos of his face (plenty of which were earlier photos shopped to match his current eye shade) began to flood Tumblr** and other forms of social media, often accompanied by the theories (and original artwork) of his fans; directors and co-stars looked on in varying degrees of apprehension, bewildered fascination and studied indifference.

He bore the tide of all this speculation with little more than the occasional shrug and sometimes a hollow laugh. All he could think about was Kyoko and his work; these two things became his driving forces to rival even food and sleep, the only two things allowed to take up space in his mind. Even as he threw himself into his work with a redoubled fury that awed his colleagues and kept him from utterly collapsing into depression, she was never far from his thoughts.

Thoughts of her kept him in line better than the mask of Ren Tsuruga ever had. He no longer differentiated between the man he had been and the man he had become. No longer carried on arguments between both sides in his head. For the first time in a long time, he felt ... whole. Raw, restless, and anxious to see Kyoko again. But whole nonetheless. It was a strange sensation, still playing the part, but knowing for a fact that there was no longer a dividing line straight down the center of him.

He never saw her for that month, week and four days, though he looked for her around every corner and watched (and re-watched) every bit of her television work that he could find that he didn't already have on DVD.

_Box R_ was in its last season, and her Natsu was more wantonly villainous than ever. In the space of about four episodes, he watched her cross the line from bullying sadist to full-on murderess, never once losing that coldly affable heiress appeal even as she orchestrated and got away with the brutal assault of a hated rival (formerly a devoted member of her sinister crew) via cunning indirection and the skillful seduction of a police chief.***

_"Is it really so difficult to comprehend, Migumi-chan? I've won. You've lost. Shouldn't you be used to that by now? I'm sure your onee-sama is."_

She spoke these words to her victim's traumatized sister, whispering them in the parlor of the funeral home, so coldly beautiful and pitiless in the face of the girl's tears that Kuon couldn't help but hate her even as he silently praised Kyoko.

He often made the mistake of watching her work just before he went to bed. Every night, like a ritual, like a strange kind of pennance. She would have been in his dreams regardless, but with his nightly ritual, Kyoko wasn't merely _there_: She was there in many guises.

He twisted and turned in his sheets, pursued by and pursuing the same woman in different faces. Natsu's perfectly polished talons caressed his face as she whispered sinister-sweet nothings in his ear, her velvety voice making his blood run hot one moment and cold the next. He ran from her embrace, the gleam of Setsu's lip ring and chain drawing him through the darkness. The leather-clad nymph was scant inches from his grasp when Kyoichi came hurtling at him from nowhere, knocking him off-balance. He stumbled and fell right on top of Kyoko herself, flushed and heated and barely concealed by his shirt as she had been that night in his bed.

He awoke, as always, hard and sweaty and shaken.

But most of all, alone and feeling as though he were committing the strangest kind of adultery.

_**. . .**_

_#"Radio TCP is requesting another interview,"_ Yashiro informed his charge over the phone one very cold evening late in this period of exile.

Bone-tired and looking forward to another night of uneasy sleep, Kuon unlocked his front door, his cell cradled between his head and his shoulder. He stepped inside. "The answer is still - "

The smell of something heavenly wafting from his kitchen stemmed his refusal dead in its tracks.

_#"... Ren? Ren, are you there?"#_

His heart pounded, adrenaline and hope chasing away his weariness as the delicous smell wove its spell around him. "I'll call you back."

He dropped his stuff unceremoniously by the door, clamoring out of his shoes, ran into the kitchen ... and found it empty and seemingly untouched, save for a steaming pot of tonjiru on his stove and a handwritten note on the countertop:

_**"I hope you like it. There's a bit of Sriracha in it, not a lot. I miss you so badly. Eat as much as you can, there's plenty for leftovers."**_

As there was still steam rising from the pot despite the oven being off, Kuon couldn't help but think she was still close by. He managed to grab the tail end of his common sense before he did something truly ridiculous like searching the apartment for her.

Heart still very much lodged in his throat, he got out a bowl and chopsticks. He ladled the hearty soup into the bowl, sat at the table in front of the television without turning it on and began to eat. It was delicious as only her food could ever be, cooked and spiced to perfection. He would have expected nothing less than perfection, but he was just happy it was there, that she had been there and had made it.

His phone rang in his coat pocket. He pulled it out, checked the caller ID on the screen and flipped it open.

"Kyoko-chan," he said with neither preamble nor pretense.

_#"Did you eat?"# _

"Yes," he said.

_#"Did you like it?"#_

"Very much so."

_#"I love you,"#_ she blurted out.

"I love you, too. Now come back."

The anguish in her voice was plain: _#"I can't."#_

"Come back."

_#"I-I want to."#_

"Then come back."

_#"Don't tempt me."#_ The words stopped him cold. From any other woman it might have just been a thing to say, a prelude to verbal foreplay, flirtatious and benevolently insincere.

From this woman ... No.

He wasn't the only one suffering here. He could hear it in her voice.

"You're right. I'm sorry, Kyoko-chan."

_#"It's alright. I'm ... trying to hurry things along as much -"#_

"Please don't."

_#"Eh? Don't what?"#_

"Don't rush. I'll be fine. I'll keep thinking of you, and I'll be fine."

_#"Oh, Kuon ... I'll do the same ... About you, I mean! I wouldn't think about me! That would just be strange ..."#_

He laughed, the first real, deep laugh he had had since that ride home. He wiped tears from his eyes that were as much from the laughter as they were from missing her so badly.

"I should probably let you go. Er ... Off the phone, that is ... Great, now I'm doing it, too," he said only half-jokingly. A shaky, but genuine laugh was her reply, one that shaded off into a sniffle. He realized she was probably crying as well and fought the urge to drive to wherever she was with the sole purpose of wiping her face and then leaving her in peace the way he promised.

_#"Good night ..."#_

"Good night."

_#"... my faery prince."#_

The line beeped, and she was gone again, taking his heart with her when she left.

_**. . .**_

About a week later, at approximately eight that morning, Yashiro noticed a definite shift and hadn't a clue what to make of it.

Ren had become, not really difficult, but uncharacteristically taciturn. He hadn't snapped at anyone, but his gentlemanly mask had definitely slipped and there was no discernible effort to put it back on again. He was civil, but quietly detached when not summoning emotion for the camera. He spoke only when spoken to and didn't try to keep a conversation going if it wasn't strictly related to work or something equally practical.

Kuon had told Yashiro everything that happened between him and Kyoko (minus the sex and his real identity, of course, there was only so much he was willing to share with his manager). He had been so bereft that Yashiro couldn't even find it in himself to celebrate that, at long last, they had declared themselves to each other.

... Not in front of Ren, anyway. He had gone into a proper spasm of delight in private, guiltily cutting it short out of respect for his charge's suffering.

Suffering which, given the peaceful glow that enveloped the actor like a holy aura as he leaned against his car, seemed to have resolved itself. He looked as though he were one with the morning sunlight pooled around him, basking in it despite the sharp chill in the air.

"You're in a good mood," Yashiro pointed out with a tentative smile as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"I am," the younger man replied warmly, shutting his own door, "and I have no idea why."

Yashiro blinked rapidly, confused. "Eh?"

"Nothing really special has happened. I just ... I feel really good today. I woke up this way. Strange. But good."

"That's wonderful, Ren. Um ... isn't it?"

Kuon started the engine and thought about it before answering. "I suppose it is."

The day as it unfolded was not _at all_ deserving of this optimism.

He of The Ever Changing Blocking-san (a title which Kuon would have been very much tempted to use to said director's face) had him doing an average of thirty takes per scene and counting.

Yashiro lost his ever-present briefcase a grand total of twice in one day; doubling back to retrieve it each time had made them late to two seperate rehearsals.

Ren was spotted at a gas station near a college campus evidently crawling with Tsuruga fans and a small stampede of students both male and female tried to flag his car down as they peeled away from the pumps. It was later discovered that a DJ at Radio TCP had blabbed their location (revealed to him by an unknown source) as revenge for not doing the interview they kept begging for.

Kuon, somehow, gave less than a damn. In a way, he was almost having fun. His unaccountably good mood was like a cloud he could float on, carrying him above the fray. He didn't understand why, but he certainly wasn't complaining. It beat the hell out of being depressed, so he just sort of ... went with it.

This all made Yashiro more than a little suspicious. He knew this wasn't just Ren plastering on a fake smile and bearing it all. At various points throughout the day, he wondered if maybe there had been something other than caffeine in his charge's morning coffee.

These musings were interrupted around nine that evening, after a grueling rehearsal, by an unexpected phone call. Taking refuge in an unused dressing room at LME's adjacent theatre hall and planning their next move in the wake of an abruptly cancelled photo shoot, a shrill ring blared from the manager's pocket. He answered the phone, listened for a moment and then looked over at Ren.

"It's Takadara-san," Yashiro said, mystified as to why the President would call his phone to reach Ren and not just dial the actor directly. He handed the phone over to his equally flummoxed charge.

_#"Ren! Sorry to hear about that gas station incident! I trust you're alright? Did you happen to lose your cell phone today? I've been ringing you for hours now."#_

Kuon's hand flew to his jean pocket, feeling around for his cell. He felt through his discarded coat and realized there was a hole in one of the pockets. "Yes, it's definitely gone. I didn't even notice until you said that. What was it you were calling me for?"

_#"Nothing, really, I just wanted to see how you were doing."#_

" Oh ... ?"

_#"... What? I can't call just to check in? Do I always have to be up to something?"#_

He was just about to say "Well, yes" when he heard something from down the hall. A voice that had been haunting him for weeks on end.

"Moko-_saaaan_! Please? Can't we? _Please_?"

And he went to the door and saw _her_, breathtaking in a lavender hoodie dress, gray thermal tights and black ankle boots. Her hair was pinned up haphazardly, some of the strands jutting back spiky-straight and falling to frame her face. She was speaking to someone through a doorway down the hall. She leaned into the entrance, her hands braced on the door frame as she spoke. She was far enough down the hall that he couldn't hear what she was saying (now that she wasn't raising her voice), but he could see her, real and present and more beautiful than any dream his mind had conjured.

_#"Are you still there, Ren?"# _

"You planned this somehow," he accused flatly through the lump in his throat.

_#"Really, now, am I to blame for everything that happens around here? Do you want to put orignal sin on me while you're at it?"#_ In a voice positively creaking with mischief, Lory said,_ #"Well, what is it I've planned, then? Did something happen ... ?"_

"You did. You definitely did."

_#"Good night, Kuon."# _The line went dead, he tossed the palm pilot back to Yashiro (who fumbled it several times before catching it) and he leaned back against the dressing room's doorframe without taking his eyes off Kyoko, not even once.

He stared at her legs as though he'd never seen them before and never would again. He remembered her thighs crushing around his head and the exquisite taste of her in his mouth. She leaned a bit further into the entryway, the fabric of her dress skimming the perfect curve of her bottom as her leg muscles tensed slightly from her stance.

Yearning he could barely handle began to wring at his insides. He thought he knew wanting. After so many cold nights, he thought he had known. He didn't know anything. Not anything like this. It hurt to watch her in that moment, but he wasn't about to turn away for anything short of a gunshot being fired.

Kyoko, in the middle of negotiating a post-work dinner with Moko-san and Amamiya (though it was more begging a typically grumpy Moko-san to come along at this point), felt an odd but not unpleasant tingle run through her. The sense that she was being watched cut her off mid-sentence.

Moreover, the sense that whoever was watching her had no ill intent was especially odd. Whenever she picked up on someone's approach or regard, there was often an alarm to go with it. She was not alarmed. It felt ... rather nice, actually. A little like the sun beaming down on her, accompanied by the smooth caress of a spring wind. She turned to her left and saw nothing but the usual bustle of cast and crew as they drifted through the halls.

She turned to her right and felt her knees nearly buckle at the sight of Kuon Hizuri staring right at her.

His dark hair was swept fully back from his face, sparing her none of his gaze's intensity. He was leaning back against the door frame of the other dressing room just as she stood in the doorway of the one her two friends shared. His white Henley shirt (_Did he bring a warm enough coat?_) clung to his torso, showing off his chiseled arms to perfection as they folded over his washboard of a stomach. His black jeans were just as tight against those powerful limbs and slim hips, notched with a black belt that had a round silver buckle.

She really shouldn't have looked there, but it was easier than looking back into those intent green eyes as they roved up her body, trailing fire in their wake, to her face. He lifted his chin in silent acknowledgement of having been caught ogling her and continued to stare. She was struck by the longing she could see in his eyes, even from that distance. So much so that she couldn't fathom taking her eyes away from his again even as her face began to turn watermelon-pink and her palms clammy with sweat.

Kanae and Amamiya glanced at one another, then back at Kyoko, perturbed by her abrupt quiescence. They got up from their seats and went to the doorway when it became clear she wasn't going to start moving or talking any time soon.

"K-Kyoko-san? Are you alright?"

"What's gotten into y - ?" Kanae leaned just outside the doorframe and saw Ren further down the hall. "_Ah_. Good. Finally, we can get this over and done with ... Well, what are you waiting for? Go over there."

The spell broke at those words, and a tidal wave of nerves roared up within, playing through her like a storm of static electricity. Having been in many an awkward stare down with "Ren Tsuruga" over the past few years, Kyoko began to duck into her friends' dressing room out of sheer force of habit, despite the urge to run straight towards Kuon Hizuri.

Kanae was having none of it.

"Oh, no, you don't!" she growled, grabbing the other girl with both hands as she attempted to slip past her. "This has gone far enough, and _it ends now_!"

She proceeded to frog-march Kyoko out into the hallway and face her forcefully in Kuon's direction as he looked on, first with confusion, then sympathy and guilty amusement. This got the attention of Yashiro, who stuck his own head out of the doorway and took note of the scene playing out across from them. He began his own, far less militant version of the pep talk Kyoko was getting at the same moment:

"You are _not_ a coward, Kyoko Mogami. Now quit _acting_ like one," Kanae hissed in the girl's ear.

"I never meant for it to be this way," Kyoko muttered pitifully to Kanae, never taking her eyes off of Kuon. His gaze never wavered from hers either, though he kept up a steady stream of conversation with his manager.

Kanae sighed with so much exasperation it sounded more like a growl. She had wiped away enough furtive tears to drown a kitten these past weeks. The only remedy in sight was the man across the way, and she wasn't about to let Kyoko lose out on the happiness the idiot so richly deserved, damn it.

"You can't always wait for the perfect moment, alright? That's just how life _works_. Deal with it, quit being a wimp and _get over there_." Kanae punctuated these last three words with a stomp of her foot.

"You're ready for this," Amamiya said gently, now standing on Kyoko's other side. She laid her hand on the girl's shoulder, placating. "We know it. You know it. Now _he_ needs to know it."

Kyoko's heart pounded. "B-but - what if he's mad at me? For making him wait?"

"He doesn't look mad, Kyoko-san. He looks like he misses you. Just like you miss him."

Kanae nodded firmly in agreement. "Exactly. Now march."

Kyoko didn't move.

Fire blazed in Kanae's steel-gray gaze, her eyes showing a dangerous rim of white above the iris. "_Mar__ch_."

Kyoko flinched at her friend's tone of command, but still didn't move. Her feet felt rooted to the ground, and there wasn't nearly enough air in her lungs. Kanae smacked her in the small of her back, and she jumped, sufficiently galvanized. "_Alright_!"

Yashiro noticed the slap with alarm and tilted his head down, muttering, "Did she just smack her in the tush?"

Ren snorted, finally sparing his manager a glance. "Did you just say the word '_tush_'?"

His manager cut his eyes at him as the three girls slowly began to approach them. "They're coming over. Start walking, Ren."

Ren lifted his brow askance. "Or what, you'll smack me, too?"

Yashiro swiveled his head and fixed him with his notoriously blood-chilling glare, the one he reserved for overzealous fans that tried to mob his charge.

"_Start_. _Walking_."

"Fine, fine ..." the actor conceded, moving to meet the three young women halfway with his manager by his side.

They made their way towards one another, the hallway gradually narrowing until they were a respectable distance apart. The air between Kyoko and Kuon seemed to dance with waves of tension, as though a mirage might spring up between them at any moment.

Yashiro greeted Chiori and Kanae when it became clear that Ren wasn't going to say anything. They greeted him in turn when they realized the same about Kyoko. These greetings, once completed, shaded off into a painfully awkward silence as the two principal players to this encounter were still staring wordlessly at one another.

And then finally:

"Hello." It was all Kyoko could think to say.

"Hello." Kuon could do little better, it seemed.

The two then continued to stare wordlessly at one another, at a loss for what to say next.

Kanae bristled at the melodrama of it all._ For goodness sake, its like a stand-off in a Western ... Hey, there's an idea ..._

"I saw your billboard," Kyoko managed to choke out.

"I saw your ... everything," he said feebily.

More silence descended.

It was at this point that Kanae began to whistle the theme to _The Good, The Bad and The Ugly._ Chiori, adaptive as ever, was so kind as to offer a very convincing harmonica sound effect alongside her. Kuon, still staring at Kyoko, very slowly cracked a grin as he realized what they were doing. Yashiro bit down on his lower lip to stifle his chuckles.

Kyoko did them one better and hunched forward with an unladylike guffaw. The tension fled.

She turned a bemused glare from one girl to the other as they continued their very unnecessary soundtrack. "Really, you two? Is this how we conduct ourselves now? Is it?"

Yashiro glanced around, feigning annoyance. "Where's that tumbleweed when you need it?"

Mid-whistle, Kanae threw her head back and laughed suddenly, startling everyone. Then she pointed at Yashiro with a grin and said, "_Good_ one."

Yashiro nodded back, smugly gracious.

"Oh, for the love of ..." Kyoko griped, gripping the bridge of her nose with two of her fingers.

"What?" Kanae said defensively. "Come on, that was _hilarious._"

Ren stared down at his manager. "You _do_ realize your position just became replaceable, don't you?" he lied.

Yashiro's eyes widened, and he paled visibly. He spun towards his charge. "Don't even joke like that!"

The actor's brow arched, his smile wide and indulgent. "Who said I was joking?"

"Ren," Kyoko said suddenly, still clutching the bridge of her nose.

He looked back at her, his irate manager forgotten.

"Yes?"

"Take me away from these awful people."

His brain must have stalled out at _Take me away_, because he found himself advancing on her without the slightest hesitation. "Done and done."

The next thing she knew she was being hoisted like a bride into his arms and carried away, bag and all. She felt unimaginably light in his arms, as though she weighed no more than a pixie.

"I didn't mean that _literally_!" she shrieked, clutching her bag to her chest as he briskly made for the exit.

"Then you shouldn't have phrased it so literally," he shot back, far too happy to have her talking to him and in his arms again to even pretend to put any heat into his argument.

"Y-you better not drop me!" she said, dizzied by the close contact after so long and fighting down the corners of her mouth as they threatened to break into a giddy smile. She was failing miserably, and so was he.

"Are you calling me clumsy?"

"Wouldn't it have been enough to take my _hand_?" she snapped, ignoring his question.

_No, it wouldn't have_. "I could have just hauled you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes."

"I'll have none of those caveman antics!"

His eyes simmered with heat. "_None_ of them, eh ... ?"

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Their friends watched the bickering pair as they neared the backstage exit, fully oblivious to the odd looks they were getting from the people they passed. All three of them breathed a relieved sigh.

"Aren't you all coming? Dinner is on me," Kuon asked over his shoulder.

"Oh, but I thought we were '_awful_' people? '_Replaceable_', even. Surely, you wouldn't want to eat with the likes of _us_?" Yashiro called back archly, none too quick to forgive Ren for casually threatening his job.

"You might be awful people, but you're _our_ awful people. Now come along, or none of you are eating."

"_That_ would certainly be awful," Kanae muttered. "I'm starving."

Yashiro snickered and fell into step with the other two LoveMe members as they all moved to catch up with the reunited couple.

_**. . .**_

The room was removed enough from the rest of the lounge to be private, but just near enough for them to hear the music, laughter and chatter of the other patrons through the half-open screen door. Tea lights strung along the room's ceiling gave it a cozy amber glow. Kyoko was staring up at them, marveling silently at how they looked like tiny fey folk suspended in the air, when she was blinded out of the corner of her eye by a flashbulb.

The stray paparazo was quickly subdued and escorted out by the staff within a matter of moments. Kyoko shook her head.

"I guess this will be on the celebrity news beat by morning, right?" she said, toying with the straw in her drink and trying to work up enough anxiety to even care. She knew it would be a problem, but right at this moment, there didn't seem to be a problem in the world.

Kuon, the very picture of blissful indifference, smiled warmly. "Probably."

"Don't you care?" she asked.

"Of course. How else will everyone hear about my good fortune?"

She rolled her eyes, despite the somersaulting in her stomach. "Good for us, maybe," she said, her tone firm, "but I seriously doubt your fans will feel the same way."

"They'll see it however they're going to see it," he said, running his hand up and down her back. "All I want to see is you."

She blushed furiously and ducked her head. He kissed her cheek and told her not to worry so much. They turned their attention back to the other guests across the table.

Yashiro, sandwiched between Kanae and Amamiya, was in hysterics as they regaled him with tales of various on-set hijinks. Two bottles of sake sat before them. One was already empty; the other didn't have far to go.

"You_ can't_ be serious!" he was saying.

Kanae lifted the hand that wasn't occupied with her drink up to about shoulder-level, her expression deliberately solemn but her eyes sparking with mischief. "My hand to God."

"No!"

"_Yes_." She jabbed a finger at Amamiya, who was covering her face with both hands as she tried to reign in her laughter. "I look up _mid-speech_ and see this lunatic, right behind the director's back, doing that ridiculous dance, just to trip me up! And if I'm not mistaken, a couple of extras got in on it, too!"

"Did it work?" Yashiro asked, brows lifted high.

Kanae grimaced. "Unfortunately, yes. I glance up from the podium, and there she is ... _Gangnam Style-ing_ like there's no tomorrow, looking me dead in the eye as I'm trying to get through the damn scene. I lost it. Mo, I hope you're pleased with yourself!" she fired at Amamiya as the other girl wiped tears of laughter out of her eyes. "_You're_ the reason I can't hear that song without gnashing my teeth!"

"You got me back though," the other girl pointed out with a grin, eyes glittering wickedly.

Now it was Kanae's turn to cover her face, one hand coming up to shield her embarrassed eyes. "Oh, God ... I did, didn't I?"

Yashiro glanced between the two of them. "What, isn't that a good thing?"

"Not the way _she_ went about it," Kyoko interjected, face alight with a huge grin and an ever huger blush as she recollected Moko-san's method of retaliation.

Yashiro's eyes bulged in anticipation. "What on earth did you _do_?" he asked Kanae, who abruptly busied herself with pouring another drink from the bottle on the table.

"She waited until I had my close-ups - " Amamiya began.

The second LoveMe member replaced the bottle on the table with a slight thud. "Ah, God," Kanae griped.

"- for an interview scene -"

"Come on, it wasn't like -"

" - and started _miming cunnilingus _behind the director."

Yashiro snorted sake out of his nose, then frantically went about gathering up napkins for his face while everyone roared with laughter, even Kanae, despite her blush. Kuon lifted his eyebrow at Kyoko; Kyoko lifted hers right back, but flushed pink all the same.

"I think what really sold it was just how _into_ it you got -" Amamiya continued with a slight sneer.

"Watch it, Chiori."

"I'm just saying, there seemed to be quite a bit of _skill_ there -"

"Seriously. Shut up. I'm _this_ close to punching you right now."

"Try it, and see what happens."

"You _guuuuys_, no!" Kyoko wailed plaintively, clutching at Kuon's waist in a way he found wonderfully distracting. "No fighting! This is a happy occasion!"

Kanae looked at the two of them together and cracked a small, not-quite-begrudging smile. "True."

"Don't they look so adorable?" Yashiro said dreamily.

Amamiya nodded, beaming from ear to ear. "They do indeed."

Kanae rolled her eyes over the rim of her glass, but didn't disagree.

Kyoko looked up at Kuon, and he looked down at her. "We're adorable?" she asked.

Kuon shrugged. "Evidently."

"Well, as this _is_ a happy occasion," Kanae drawled, "would you like another drink?"

"No," Kyoko said, "I think I'll just stick to the one I've got."

"Are you sure? I've seen you put away far more than that."

Kyoko lifted her glass in a mock toast. "_Likewise!_"

Kanae leaned across the table, clinking her sake with Kyoko's mojito amidst more laughter. "Touche."

"I _still_ can't believe you guys didn't bring me along for that adventure," Amamiya said with a pout.

"It was enough of a mess without dragging another person into it," Kyoko pointed out.

"Besides, I doubt you would have thanked us for the hangover the next day," Kanae added.

"True," the third LoveMe member conceded. "Did you at least get the experience you thought you would?"

"I did, it was really good practice, all things considered. But honestly, I can't wait until the play's last run. Binding my breasts is such a pain. _Literally_."

Yashiro choked quietly on his drink before quickly setting it down on the table.

Kanae rolled her shoulders as if to demonstrate her discomfort, grimacing slightly. "No, really, they're so _sore_, all the time - "

Amamiya interrupted gleefully: "Oh my god, Kanae! Kanae, look at his glasses, they're fogging up!"

"N-no, they're not!" Yashiro protested, yanking them off his face with both hands as Kanae leaned forward to get a better look.

"So that's what you look like without them," Kanae said in blatant wonder. Yashiro ducked his head shyly, only to have her tilt it back up with her fingers.

"What lovely eyes," Amamiya gushed, her own eyes widening in fascination. "Those lashes go for miles!"

"Um, I don't think - " Yashiro protested weakly.

"And those cheekbones are simply _amazing_," Kanae interrupted, guiding his chin to and fro so she could appraise his features from several angles."Where have they been hiding this whole time?"

"Have you considered modeling?" Amamiya asked, leaning around to gawk. "Ooh, maybe for a line of designer glasses? Wouldn't that be something, Kanae?"

"Now, there's an idea," Kanae agreed, leaning dangerously close to the man's face. "And since he looks so young -"

Kyoko gawked at the spectacle her friends were making of themselves and Kuon's poor manager. "Must you manhandle him?" she hissed.

Still gripping Yashiro's blushing face by the chin, Kanae looked over at Kyoko and answered slyly, "You might, too, if your hands weren't already full."

"My hands are not full!" she shot back, completely overlooking the fact that she had yet to relinquish her hold on a quietly chuckling Kuon.

"Not yet anyway," Kanae and Kuon deadpanned in perfect unison.

Kyoko gasped as everyone else, even the still-flustered Yashiro, broke out into laughter. Kuon pulled her the last remaining inch that separated them and whispered "Sorry, I couldn't resist" in her ear. She pinched his side with a pout, making him laugh even harder. She scooted back to a semi-respectable distance, trying not to notice how much she craved his warmth.

The two hours continued in much the same vein: stories traded back and forth amidst long jags of laughter, cold drinks and the lounge's eclectic music. Kanae and Amamiya seemed hellbent on making poor Yashiro as uncomfortable as possible with their teasing, but he was a good sport about it. Kuon and Kyoko each stopped at one drink each. The same could not be said for the manager and the other two LoveMe members. Around eleven, Kanae wandered off to the ladies' room to place a call for a taxi.

"Come along then, Clark Kent, our ride is here," she said once she had stumbled back into the room for her bag.

Yashiro blinked in drunken confusion. "Clark Kent?"

She pushed his glasses up to his forehead and pretended to seriously assess his face again. "True, you're not quite Superman, but you'll do."

"I'll do _what_ exactly?" he asked as he struggled to his feet.

"That remains to be seen, Yukihito," Kanae replied, taking him by his necktie and leading him towards the exit with Amamiya giggling maniacally right behind them.

Something planted firmly against the side of Kuon's arm. He looked down to see that it was Kyoko's tomato-red face. "Oh, my _God_, those lunatics ...!"

Kuon nodded sagely. "Pretty much."

"That can't _possibly_ end well."

"I think they're safe with him," he said vaguely, far more fascinated with the way her lips pursed with worry than with his manager being carried off like an imperiled damsel.

"Yes," Kyoko agreed, still watching their friends as they left, "but is _he_ safe with _them_?"

"Good question," he conceded, still hopelessly drawn to the sweet bow of her lips. "However ... "

"Yes?" she said, not looking at him. She had sensed his gaze, but couldn't turn to face it. She wasn't sure what had possessed her to sit so close to him. Or had he sat this close to her of his own accord? Perhaps they had started a reasonable distance apart and then gradually drifted together? She couldn't remember.

"I'm a terrible friend for saying this, I know," he admitted, his voice as soft as his eyes lingering over her, "but I'm not too concerned about Yukihito right now."

She finally looked up, fully intending to either ask what he meant or to scold him for not caring. The full, smoldering force of those jewel toned eyes engulfed her, and the words - whatever they had been - died in her throat. Time slowed down, the sound of the music just beyond the door became muted and strangely echo-y. From the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she was flooded with dizzy warmth. He leaned close, breath grazing her cheek. The tip of his nose was barely an inch from hers; a lock of his hair hung down to tickle her forehead.

Kyoko swayed. "... Oh."

"We're alone," he noted quietly, staring at her lips. She felt his hand splayed wide on her back, not pulling her closer, but steadying her. Such a kind gesture, really, as she doubtless would have fallen over from this lustful vertigo he was giving her.

"No, we're not," she disagreed just as quietly. "We're together."

That smile only he could produce, the one so unabashedly beautiful that it was heartbreaking by default, came to his lips, lighting up those remarkable eyes.

"That's true," he whispered, daring to lower his head just a bit more. His lips brushed hers and he watched her eyes flutter shut at the contact. She shifted against him, extending the momentary brush to something that was almost but not quite a kiss.

She did something then that he would never, not in a million lifetimes, forget.

She reached down into the neck of her hooded dress, startling him. Queen Rosa still glittered against her collarbone as she tugged at the fabric, but that wasn't what she reached for. There was another chain around her neck, a longer chain that she pulled and pulled until it was fully out of her dress.

At the end of this chain was his house key.

"Will you take me home, Kuon?"

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><p><strong>We're almost there, you guys! Let me know what you think and sit tight, the next chapter's on its way sooner than you think (given my awful track record, I'm so so so sorry, I've missed you all so much, brb)<strong>

*** Jarring, I know, but that scene was so sad to write, I just had to inject some levity. Also, it struck me as a way to differentiate between the ways in which Kuon (as a grown man) would phrase his thoughts as opposed to the way Ren would put it, even if the thought was technically the same.  
><strong>

**** Gotta give a shout-out to my fellow Tumblrites!  
><strong>

**** I always felt like this would be the direction Box R would take if it was a longer running series that put just a bit more focus on Naa-chan. Seriously, Natsu has future crime boss/black widow/femme fatale bitch written all over her.  
><strong>


	6. Do You Swear? (Part 2, Final)

_disclaimer_: I do not own Skip Beat! Quit saying I do! People will start to talk!

**AN**: I know this is usually where I put something long-winded, but I'm just gonna shut up and let you get to the smutty goodness I promised. Enjoy!

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><p><em><strong>Do You Swear? (Part 2, Final)<strong>_

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><p>He kept his arm around her as they left the lounge, but did nothing more.<p>

He let his fingers trail her arm as he handed her into the passenger side of his car, but did nothing more.

He held her hand for most of the drive to his apartment, and even as she caressed the lines of his palm with her fingertips and playfully predicted his future in a honeyed voice, he did nothing more.

He planted a fleeting kiss on her forehead when she stumbled into him as he handed her out of his car, but did nothing more.

He whispered things in the elevator that made her knees shake, but did nothing more.

It was only when they had made it into his apartment and gotten their shoes off that he found himself standing closer than he should have. They wandered into the living room, his shadow engulfing her as he trailed behind. She spun to face him, her eyes wide and expectant and brimming with an anxious desire he could almost taste, he was so close.

She cracked a tiny smile as a bead of sweat dotted her hairline. She craned her neck to look him in the eye, the copper strands of her tousled twist falling back to graze the hood of her dress.

"This isn't going to work, Kuon."

Every fiber of him strained with the effort it took to keep a straight face. "... It isn't?"

"No, it isn't. This vantage point is giving me a crick in my neck," she joked nervously.

_You pick a time like this to tell jokes. I love you anyway, you little brat. _"How rude of me," he said, shaking his head.

He dropped to his knees, putting him at eye level with her chest. She stumbled back a bit, startled, until he wrapped his arms around her hips and drew her into him. She grasped him without hesitation. "I've missed you so much," he whispered, embarrassed by the force of his own need, and she said, "I know, Kuon. I know." She slid her arms around his neck and held him tight.

"Why did you leave that day? And the way you did?"

She took a deep breath, her exhale ruffling his hair. "A lot of reasons. A lot of _exhausting_ reasons."

He looked up curiously and found genuine weariness on her face. "How so?"

"It was like ... giving myself whiplash. I had my reasons, I assure you, but they just kept _changing_. I wasn't stalling for time, I just ... There was always _something_ stopping me. As soon I had one resolved, another would come in its place. And there was work, of course. A lot more than I anticipated. It didn't seem like I'd ever get to see you again."

Her arms slid away as she straightened. Her fingertips and her gaze caressed his face, searching out the details her mind could never erase.

"I wanted to come back," she said softly, "the moment I shut that door shut behind me."

"Why didn't you?"

The light in her eyes died a little. "Shoutaro."

Kuon's face clouded. The name conjured a mental image of the singer, his face sporting an arrogant smirk that just begged for a squarely planted fist. "What did he do this time?" _If he laid so much as a finger on her -_

"Oh, no, no, he didn't do anything! I haven't seen him in a while. A very long while," she added, sounding quite happy about it.

He exhaled, relieved. "Then how did he make it into this discussion?"

"Believe me, I find no joy in mentioning him either. But ... when you told me everything ... All I could think was that I was getting a repeat of what happened with him."

Her fingers flew to his lips, but it was that look which stopped his protest dead in its tracks.

"Please, let me finish. Please."

Every fiber of his being wanted that arrogant prick out of this conversation. Fast. But that bleak, vaguely haunted look in her eyes cut him to his core.

He was hard pressed to settle on one thing he loved the most in a purely physical sense, but her eyes would win if you twisted his arm enough. He appreciated them more than even the most seasoned cameraman could. They could convey worlds of meaning or precious little, yet they were always, always compelling. A man could get tangled and lost in the golden web of those eyes. Happily.

But he saw the anguish churning behind them, the hurt turning their beauty into something tragic to see and impossible to deny. He promptly shut his mouth, and she began to explain, that horrible look gradually melting away:

"It's awful, I know, but it was a knee-jerk reaction. I couldn't help it, it was as though my brain just ... shut off, and I was running on autopilot. All of a sudden I was back in that corridor in my fast food uniform, holding the meal I'd brought him. Listening to him cast me aside. Admitting shamelessly that he had lied to me the whole time, that he wasn't the man I'd been led to believe he was."

She stopped and shut her eyes, breathing deep as the recollection picked at the scab of this betrayal. He felt the old anger rolling off of her like heat from an open oven. He pressed his cheek to her stomach and wrapped his arms tighter around her hips. She draped her arms around his shoulders and lowered her mouth to the top of his head, inhaling the scent of his hair.

In a few moments Kyoko began to speak again. He felt the anger ebbing with each word.

"The situations were nothing alike. Obviously," she continued, lifting her head. "And I knew it even _then. _But I just ... couldn't. I couldn't see past it, and I needed to get away from you before I said something terrible. Even feeling the way I did in that moment, I knew you didn't deserve that. And that I didn't want to sink so low. So I ran."

"Then I shut the door behind me and ... just the sound of it shutting ... the thought of never coming back ... and that look on your face when I left ... It was the worst kind of wake-up call."

He looked up to find her staring straight ahead, straight into the past. Her face was still, but her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.

"I've never felt so stupid and mean in all my life." Her head dipped in shame, resting against his as she tried to blink back her tears and only succeeded in squeezing them out, drenching his face as they fell. "I'm so sorry, Kuon-kun. So sorry ..."

She slowly but deliberately began to slide down the length of his body, and he froze in shock. What on earth could she be contemplating by way of apology that would call for _this_ kind of maneuver ... ?

Kuon heaved a silent sigh of relief when he realized that she had dropped down into a familiar dogeza at his knees. He leaned down and stroked her hair, whispering to her as she sniffled, "You're here now. And you would never abandon me, you said so yourself. That's all that matters to me."

"But I - " she began, turning her head just enough to show one side of her tear-streaked face.

"Hush. You had your reasons, and you've apologized. That's more than enough."

She sat up a little. "Still - !"

"It's enough." His tone was as firm as his hands were gentle.

She sniffled and drew herself up, shaking a bit as he brushed away her tears. "Okay ..."

"Then what happened?" he asked, his thumb catching a stray droplet on her jaw. "What stopped you from coming back?"

Kyoko's lips twitched, and her still-watery eyes darted away from his face. "U-um, from there the reason became, ah ... something else entirely ..."

Her face flushed visibly as she said this, and he sat up a little, intrigued. _I swear, that blush is like a dermal Viagra ... _

He tugged her up from the ground and folded his legs, settling her side-saddle on his lap. He did it so quickly she only had time to let out a small squeak before she was seated. "Go on," he prompted.

"I came back to your door, thinking of that look on your face when I left." She leaned into him, glancing up at him from under her wet lashes. "I wanted to wipe that look away and never put it back. But I knew if I went back inside and tried to, neither of us would make it to work on time."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"The thought of just leaving you there hurt so much I just wanted to turn back around and ... Well ..."

"Well ... ?"

"Well, let's just say that if I _had_," she said quietly, unable to look at him as she spoke, "there would have been an, uh ... inconvenience nine months later, Kuon."

He grimaced. "Why come back at all if you didn't trust me not to - ?"

"It wasn't _you_ I didn't trust," she said emphatically.

He blinked, failing to comprehend. And then it dawned on him.

"... _Oh_."

She ducked her head against his chest. "I was ... out of control. It was all I could do to make it to the elevator ..." Her face flushed a deeper shade of red. Even the very recollection of her desire filled her with heat. He picked it up as surely as if it were his own and tightened his grip around her as she began to move restlessly beneath the weight of his stare.

"I didn't want to throw myself at you, even _with_ protection. It wouldn't have been right, and it certainly wouldn't have helped anything. But I just lost it and I wanted you so much and I would have said anything to convince you, feeling the way I did then. It would have humiliated us both and ... Heaven help us, if you had given in ... before I could ..."

"Before you could what?"

She cleared her throat and forged on. "Get myself ... situated."

It took him a few moments to comprehend what she was talking about. And even when he did, he couldn't wrap his mind around the reality of it.

"So ... you're saying that _now_ ... you're ... ?"

She rolled up the sleeve of her dress to show a bandage on her upper arm. He reached up and gently traced it with his fingers, trying to shake off the surreal feeling that seeing it gave him. He had seen this same kind of bandage, in the same kind of spot, on women in the past. He had known what it meant. He knew what it meant now. But that didn't make it any less of a shock to see.

Contraception. She was on birth control. Kyoko Mogami was on birth control.

His silence unnerved her, and she figured she was supposed to keep talking. "Moko-san helped me decide on a method. She took me to the clinic."

Kuon nodded, still trying to wrap his mind around this new development.

_Why isn't he saying anything? Am I supposed to keep talking? _"W-we decided against condoms on the outset. And taking a pill everyday at the exact same time would be too much of a hassle."

_How much of this does he want to hear? How much does he need to hear ... ?_

She was just winding down from why an IUD would have been painful and required a week or so of recovery, and she wasn't about to miss work for it. "... so I just go in once a month for this shot and, uh ... let nature take its course. I needed more of that time away to adjust to the hormones."

He was still silent. Still staring at the bandage on her arm. That's when she leapt out of his lap and basically shoved him onto his back, pinning him by the shoulders to the carpet.

"_Please_, say something! Anything! _Make words_!" she shrieked.

Sufficiently jolted out of his daze, he said the first words his mind could seize on: "... Why are you opposed to condoms?"

"I don't want a layer of latex between us!" she blurted out, too relieved that he was speaking to really give much thought to what she was saying either. Her hand clapped over her mouth as soon as the words were out, echoing in the room.

His brows rose even higher, and he felt his blood lurch. _What an odd similarity to share._

She swallowed, her blush deepening as his appraising silence stretched on. She dropped her head onto his chest, evoking Setsu in gesture if nothing else. "I knew I was over thinking this!"

"I'm glad you did. I really wouldn't have minded them, but ... it's good that you took the initiative."

Kyoko looked up and squinted at him. "But you wouldn't have _preferred_ to use them either, would you?"

He didn't answer. The reply that came to mind wasn't something he was willing to speak aloud. How was he supposed to explain that he would rather feel nothing but her around his cock without sounding like a complete barbarian?

She slid further up the length of his body, her thigh brushing between his legs. Even through his jeans he felt her. He felt her with every part of him.

"_Would_ you?" she insisted.

"... No," he conceded with a sigh, wrapping his arms around her waist as he sat back up.

"You're shivering like I was that night," she noted. She kissed his cheek, feeling rather sorry for him all of a sudden.

"And yet I'm a lot warmer than you were then."

She bit her lip guiltily even as an unbidden smirk came to her face. "I don't know about that."

"About what?" he asked.

"I sort of, um, faked being cold. So I could cover my nerves."

His brow furrowed in confusion. "How do you _fake_ being cold to the touch? I felt you, remember? Your skin was like ice."

"Eh?! It was that convincing? Wow, I really did have you fooled!"

"But ... how?"

"I learned biofeedback. I knew it would come in handy, but I hadn't expected it to work so well!"

"Biofeedback?"

"Do you remember the script for _Beyond Fortune's End_? The term came up around the final act, and I didn't know what it meant. I did some reading and decided to try it."

"So you can manipulate your body temperature?" he asked, his benign envy obvious in his wide eyes and fascinated tone.

She nodded, beaming brightly. "It took me _months_ to get the hang of it, but yes. I've only just started working on my pain tolerance."

He chuckled, marveling at her. "Unbelievable. What other tricks have you got up your sleeve?"

Kyoko giggled, too busy basking in the glow of his admiration to give much thought to what she said next. "Oh, you'd be surprised what I can do with my ... body ... Um ... That is ..."

_Why did I say that? There was no reason to say that. The phrasing is so wrong. Maybe he didn't notice?_

His fingers curled around the back of her neck. His thumbs tilted her chin up until they were nose-to-nose. His lips curved into a smile she hadn't been able to shake loose from her dreams for weeks. The now-familiar delirium took hold of her, her thoughts scrambling. Every sense went into overdrive, and time itself was of no consequence. There was only his hands on her skin. That gleam in his eye.

_... He definitely noticed. _

"I love surprises," he whispered so close to her mouth, his low pitch vibrated through her.

"You do?" she asked feebly.

Kuon nodded, the tip of his nose rubbing against hers. His lips descended on hers, and Kyoko fell into that kiss like a woman happily drowning. Her hands came up to grasp his wrists as she kissed him back with everything she had. He pulled back ever so slightly, and she felt the loss of him like an affront, like a pinch in a place that was raw with hurt, a place made of lonely nights spent wishing he were there. She pressed in, closing the gap between them again, and bit his bottom lip, letting go in almost the same instant she had latched on.

_Hello, _he thought, watching Kyoko turn crimson yet again as his tongue ran across his lower lip.

The girl flung herself away, putting about a foot and a half too many between them. "I ... I didn't mean to - !" she began.

"I liked that," he said. Then he leaned in close, chin tilted forward, his lips close once again. "Do it again."

She swallowed. "Are you serious?"

"Yes." When she hesitated, he licked his lip again, enjoying the way her eyes couldn't help but follow the path of his tongue. "You didn't hurt me. Do it again, Kyoko-chan."

He didn't move. She leaned in, and he still didn't move. Kyoko leaned close, unnerved by the wanting in his eyes at odds with his impassive face. She moved a little nearer. He shifted back ever so slightly, cracking a tiny grin. Was he goading her? Because she felt goaded.

That's when Kuon saw it. The look she got when she accepted a challenge. The determined glint in her eye that made him thrill at the sight, that made his blood rise. _Yes_.

She placed her hands on his chest, her eyes drifting shut. _You want to be seduced ... I'll seduce you_, she thought, the words springing from that place inside where Natsu had been born years ago, where the impulse to toy with prey resided.

Kyoko's hands slid up to his shoulders, from his shoulders to his neck and from his neck to his hair, her fingers twisting slightly in the strands.

She brushed his lips with hers, felt him shiver. The caress was gentle, almost too gentle, a teasing touch. The tip of her tongue came into play, the touch still so light it drove him crazy. And at long last, she took his bottom lip between her teeth, drawing him into a kiss. Just as he began to kiss back, she pulled away, nibbling at her own lip with a mischievous smile.

"Like that?" she asked innocently. Mockingly.

All at once the room swung before her eyes as she was pulled up to her feet, then off her feet entirely and flung rather unceremoniously over the Kuon's broad shoulder.

"Caveman," she griped as he walked briskly in the direction of his bedroom.

"Cavewoman," he said back, squeezing her thigh with the large hand that anchored her. He nudged the bedroom door open with his foot and walked into the darkness. He plunked her down onto the mattress, then moved away from her. Gradually, the light grew at the beside table until they could see one another through the amber haze.

Kyoko drew her arms into her dress, leaving the fabric of the sleeves limp at her side. She peered over at the man towering before her, noting the interest with which he watched her do this. "It's too warm for this material," she offered by way of explanation. It wasn't a lie. The heat of their closeness had made the dress _very_ stuffy. "May I?"

"You may," he said, his eyes never leaving her.

She struggled out of the dress and pulled it over her head to reveal a white camisole, the fabric of it so spare he could see the outline of her lace bra and so short it left part of her midsection bare above the waist of her leggings. Kuon rounded the bed slowly, watching her shake out the dress and fold it with shaking hands. The folded bundle in hand, she crawled over to the opposite side table and placed it there, still avoiding his gaze.

Kuon closed in, spellbound. This was the closest to nude he had ever seen her. In person, anyway. Some of her more daring roles had put her in revealing clothes, yes, but this was different: there was no screen between them to blunt the effect of that pale, taut flesh. She was built rather like a jungle cat, her body a masterpiece of gentle curves and lithe muscle.

Those muscles tensed as he slid onto the mattress, his fingers finding her calf. She lay back, glancing up at him briefly only to look away again. His fingers moved up her leg, his touch as reverent as his stare. He took in every inch, as though he would never have this chance again.

Suddenly this heavenly view was thrown into darkness. He chuckled.

"Your weapon of choice," he said through the pillow she was holding to his face, "leaves much to be desired."

"Well, do you have to _stare _like that? It's like you're memorizing me or something!"

Kuon sat up and away without touching the pillow. She clutched it to her chest, cradling it like a stuffed animal. "I am.," he admitted. "Just in case this really is a dream like I think it is."

She held the pillow a bit higher as he hovered over her, part of it covering the lower half of her face. Her eyes were wide and luminescent above the cushion, shyly blinking at his comment and darting away. The corners crinkled with a flattered smile he couldn't actually see. Finding this too adorable to resist, he pulled her up into a sitting position and moved her until she was seated between his outstretched legs, her back pressed to his chest and the pillow still clutched to hers.

"You've done that before, you know," he whispered, his hands sliding under the pillow to find her stomach. "Slipped into my dreams and then left me wound up. Just as things were starting to get interesting, I might add."

"I-I'm sorry?" It seemed rather silly to apologize for something a dream version of her had done, but as she herself had been subject to a few nightly visits of her own, she couldn't help but sympathize.

She was just about to point this out when one of his hands slipped into the front of her tights, his fingertips quickly finding the dampened crotch of her panties. She gasped, her grip on the large pillow going slack as he rubbed her through the flimsy fabric. Her eyes drifted shut, and she felt his legs shift around her. His feet hooked around her ankles, drawing her legs further open, giving his fingers more room to maneuver between her thighs.

"You don't _look_ sorry. Sometimes I wonder if you like tormenting me."

She shook her head, eyes still shut. "N-no, I - " she began, only to gasp again when his fingers slipped into her panties, the touch so warm and insistent and _right_ it made her head light. Kyoko leaned back, letting go of the pillow with one hand and clutching the thigh pressing against her hip. What had she been saying? "No, I ... _Ooh_ ..."

"No?" he teased. "Perhaps I should sto -"

"_Don't,_" she said breathlessly, her other hand covering his as he started pulling it away. The pillow slipped down onto her lap, forgotten.

"Don't? So I should stop?" He deliberately slowed his touch, easing up so that she could barely feel him.

"_No!_" she wailed, loving him and wanting to kill him at the same time. _Can't kill him, not until he makes it happen, make it happen already, please, please, I can't take this, _sobbed a very base part of her brain.

He redoubled his efforts with a grin she felt rather than saw, the warm breath of his satisfied chuckle curling down the back of her neck as he tossed the pillow aside. "Somehow I thought so."

Her arousal coated his fingers, she could hear how wet she was as they worked their magic. So could he, if that smoky chuckle in her ear was any indication. She felt nearer to that glorious eruption, her vulva throbbing in response, and yet still too far away. How did he do that? Was he even doing it on purpose?

"Kuon ..." she sighed, in awe of this power he held over her at this moment, not wanting to say anything in particular, merely to speak his name aloud in wonder.

"No."

_No? No? He's saying no to his own name?_ "R-Ren ... ?" she tried again.

"Guess again," he said, that teasing note back in his voice.

_What else is there, how many names do you have? _she thought wildly. The effort it took to think, much less talk, was weakening her hold on sanity, bringing her that much closer to that elusive satisfaction.

She went out on a limb with her next guess: "... Ts-Tsuru - ?"

He swiftly, but gently bit her neck before soothing the nip with another mind-scrambling kiss. Those long fingers never let up. "Not even close, Kyoko-chan."

"If you say Cain or BJ, I'll scream," she sniped, wriggling against him, her hips circling languidly against his erection. She could feel it against her back, even through her tights and his jeans, evidence of his own need plain despite the calm, toying attitude he displayed.

"You might just scream regardless," he said in a voice made of sin, the tips of his fingers rolling her clit as it lengthened out of its hood, "and the name we're looking for is _Emperor_."

Her jaw dropped open, and what little blood that was still flowing to her upper extremities promptly changed course at those words, pumping south for all it was worth. She writhed in his grasp, her back arching enough that she veered sideways in his lap. It wasn't enough to throw off the pagan rhythm of his fingers, they were far too skilled, too insistent to dislodge. Only her _no_ would stop this, and she was far past _no_, perhaps too far to even remember what _no_ was. Her vision swam, and the little starbursts between her thighs became so acute they were almost but not quite painful.

"Oh, my _god_," she moaned, kissing more of her rational mind goodbye.

He chuckled, holding her steady with one hand as the other continued its wicked work. "Close enough."

Against all odds, she scraped together enough wherewithal to reach up and across with her right hand, fully intending to flick his forehead for this blasphemous comment. He caught her by the wrist easily before she could even lift it that high, brought her fingers to his lips in a kiss far too gallant and then held her limb hostage. His fingertips rolled the nub of her clit mercilessly, applying pressure she could feel all over. Her body twitched, her breathing labored. She was close, closer, that familiar spring loading tighter and tighter, then -

Kyoko stiffened in his arms, and he smiled down at her, his fingers fast and hard against her. "There she is ..." he whispered.

The release was so sudden it shocked her, erupting sharply and radiating out until her whole body was bathed in a hot tingle that ran from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. She throbbed against his fingers, the rhythm - _push, pull, push, pull _- drowning out what little conscious thought she was still capable of. Darts of white light played over her eyes as she tried to catch her breath.

His words rang out, clear enough to penetrate the blissful daze she had fallen into. "Are you _ever_ going to tell me the origin of that nickname?"

Her head lolled uselessly against his chest, still reeling from the climax.

"I'll take that as a no, then."

She opened her eyes and saw him licking the fingers that had just been stroking her. "Your table manners are appalling," she said without thinking. Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut as he began to laugh. "And by that I mean ... thank you. That was ... wow."

Kokyo rolled over in his lap, her hip nudging at the bulge that had prodded her in the back. She glanced down, her brows lifted and eyes gleaming with blatant interest that curled his toes.

Her front teeth snagged her lower lip, worrying it as her glance darted from the bulge to his face and back again. She sat up slowly, her heavy-lidded eyes still fixed on him. He swallowed nervously. She couldn't really be thinking what he thought she was thinking. She just couldn't.

Her hand touched his knee, and he realized he was wrong. It slid up his thigh, and he realized just how wrong he was. The wanting sharpened swift inside him, so strong it made him panic. Kuon caught her by the wrist, stopping that small hand on its path.

"Don't you want me to?" she asked, pulling a rather sad-eyed pout on him that made his arousal that much more difficult to ignore. He let her wrist go. She instantly reached up to touch his face, caressing his jaw with her palm as she sought out an explanation in his eyes.

_Dear God, yes_. "That's not important. I mean ... you're not obligated to -"

"Neither were you," she pointed out, sitting back on her heels.

"Yes, well ..." His words trailed off into nothing.

"It felt so good, what you did to me," she admitted, hardly able to believe her own audacity, but too determined to back down now. She felt him shiver against her hand, clearly anticipating what he was trying and failing to protest. "I don't know if I could ... make you feel that way, too, but ... I want to try. It shouldn't just be me."

Kuon searched for words, his mouth working impotently, not even sure what it was he wanted to say. She slid in so close there was no room for even the thought of escape, those golden eyes pleading with him. Her soft hands slid down to his chest as she pressed her body to his, pushing until his back met the mattress. He let his head drop back after a moment, which she took as a sign of surrender. She hesitated a moment more, chewing her lip indecisively, then she began to move.

_I should a put a stop to this_, he thought as she faced away and straddled his midsection. _She shouldn't do this just because she thinks she has to. It shouldn't be like that. I don't want us to be like that._

It sounded good in his head - very enlightened, very fair, very _true_, it wasn't a lie by any stretch of the imagination - but his body wasn't cooperating at all.

"And I admit I'm a bit," she continued, the tips of her fingers right at his belt buckle, "curious."

_Any second now, I will put a stop to this,_ he thought, not moving an inch.

"What's there to be curious about? Didn't you get an eyeful that time in the shower?" he said, sounding far more gruff and lofty than he felt. He was a mess inside already. What she was doing, and what she seemed about to do, were just wrecking all the more havoc within.

"Actually, no, I didn't," she said, the pout clear in her voice. "I kept my eyes on your face because I panicked. It's a mistake I've regretted since."

Because of her legs' position, the waist of her tights had slid down enough to show the dimples just above her butt; he cursed himself for not stripping them off when he had the chance. She leaned forward a bit, lifting her pert bottom higher, and he cursed himself again, too distracted by the sight to even care that she could plainly see how her actions were affecting him, even through these infernal jeans.

"Is there a reason you have to face that direction?" _Other than to torment me with this view_, he added silently.

"I can't ... that is, I don't think I'm bold enough," she said, "to look you in the eye while I do this."

_Any second now_, his mind screamed at him. _Shut the fuck up, _was his body's reply.

She sighed. He wasn't saying anything. How could he be lost in thought at a time like this? "If you don't want me to - "

"Y- You shouldn't feel like you have to - " he said rather weakly.

"I _don't_," she insisted. "Just ... say when. If ... If I do something wrong, say when. Alright? Please?"

_She's serious. Who am I to stop her if she's serious? _his mind conceded. _Fucking finally_, roared the need within.

"... Alright."

Her shaky fingers made quick work of his buckle. The button to his jeans slipped free of its hole after a few missed tries. Then came the achingly slow jerk of his zipper going down and down until it could go no further, exposing his brief-clad bulge to her gaze.

Kyoko leaned forward curiously, giving him an even better view. An overwhelming sense of hypocrisy came over him. Some gentleman he was, staring so wantonly at her ass after going on about her eyes. True, he couldn't really help it, she was half-sitting, half-kneeling on top of him and the fabric of those tights clung to every sleek, feline curve of her and ... and ... _What is she doing?_

He watched her head tilt to one side and then the other, but otherwise she remained still. Then he felt one of her hands move gently over the fabric covering him, her fingers slipping into his jeans as she sought a firmer grasp, and he let out a groan.

_I've had this dream before_, his mind raced over the pounding of his heart. He gripped her calves as she clasped him through that thin layer of cotton, her touch tentative yet relentless._ I'm imagining all of this, I know it. If I wake up too soon, I'm going to be mad as -_

Her hand slid back and then forward again, burrowing under the fabric to touch him.

_- hell._

"You're so ... warm," she whispered more to herself than to him. He opened his mouth to say something, he wasn't sure what, but it didn't matter, there was no sound coming out.

He was smooth and warm and hard under her fingers, and it made her mind wander places. He could barely fit in her hand, though she had no real way to gauge his size without pulling ... it out entirely. She leaned forward, shoring up her courage; it would have to come out some time, she couldn't be squeamish, not after coming so far. He gave another shuddering groan, and a feminine smugness stole through her. She did it again, sliding her fingers fully around his shaft and stroking with more conviction.

She couldn't tell the length, but he felt rather... wide in her palm. She flushed at the thought of being filled with that turgid girth, her still-tingling womanhood flexing absently, hungrily. She wondered at her body's greed, its continued response. How much more pleasure could it produce? How much could his?

Kyoko's fingers found the tip of his member, so smooth it had a curiously polished feel against her skin. A drop of moisture clung to it. She rubbed at that drop with her thumb, the rest of her fingers still stroking, cradling what she could. He throbbed hard under her touch, just like she had before, and she let out a surprised laugh. "Oh, my ..."

Without warning, he sat up, nearly toppling her over completely. He caught her in his arms, holding her tight enough to knock the wind out of her, her cheek

"Did I not do it right?" she asked. He didn't answer. She looked up. Then almost, _almost_ wished she hadn't. Because he was looking right back at her, and what she saw on his face was the culmination of every thought suppressed, every touch withdrawn, every dream thwarted.

He was the Emperor and the Demon Lord fused together as one, sensuous and hard and so wracked with need it she felt like a fool for believing the calm façade he had put on. Those emerald eyes blazed as he pulled her into a kiss so full of possessive zeal she couldn't help but surrender to it, his hands everywhere at once, fisting in her hair, clutching the back of her camisole, squeezing and kneading every supple curve he could grasp.

Kuon broke the kiss right as she was remembering that it was probably necessary to breath. "I need you," he panted, pulling away from her, "now. Right now."

"Yes," was all she could say.

He pulled his shirt off and tossed it aside. His hands flew to his hips, his thumbs hooking both his jeans and his underwear.

She rolled over onto her side instinctively to give him privacy, then realized how silly that was, but didn't try to turn back. She felt his fingers playing at the waist of her leggings and shivered as he rolled it down just enough to bare her hip bones.

"Cold?" he teased, his voice a seductive rumble.

"Hardly," she grumbled.

What were his fingers doing? It didn't seem to matter that they had been ... well acquainted with her just a few minutes ago. This was different. She would be naked soon. It had been one thing - a difficult enough thing - being in his shirt and nothing else. And even then, _he_ hadn't been the one doing the undressing!

In a single move, he pulled her leggings and her panties off, lifting her just enough off of the mattress to ease this maneuver. He chucked them in the direction of his discarded pants and slid in behind her, his skin hot against hers as he spooned her. She felt his hard length against her bare behind, and _This is happening, this is really about to happen, _was all she could think.

He kissed her right cheek and placed a hand on her right hip. It slid forward and down until he had a grip on the front of her right thigh. He lifted it, exposing her wet sex to the air.

"Do you need me," he asked, the tip of his member poised at her entrance, so close she could feel that polished hardness nudging just barely at her sopping folds, "like I need you?"

She nodded vigorously, wanting him to hurry, wanting him to slow down, wanting him ... just him.

"Do you?" he demanded, needing to hear it.

"Yes," she begged, "yes, please, I do, I -"

She lost her words - whatever they had been - as he thrust into her, her body yielding to his in one firm stroke. He nearly lost himself entirely, her flesh parting, twitching and soft and so resilient around his cock that _holy shit, steady, steady _were the only words he could seize on to keep himself tethered.

"Are you ... alright? Kyoko-chan?" he asked. She hadn't made any sounds of pain, she shouldn't even be in pain, she was so wet and ready and _focus, god damn it, this isn't about you!_

"I need you to say something. You're scaring me."

"Go," she said, her voice clear and raw with a need to rival even his own, "go on. _Please_, Kuon ..."

_Well, alright then, _he thought, his ego inflating to proportions he wasn't quite comfortable admitting to. He began to move, tentatively, feeling her out and trying to find the right rhythm. She clutched at the arm he had wrapped around her midsection as he moved, shaking with this newfound awareness, this fullness she had imagined before. Imagined relentlessly, yet she had no idea it would be this way.

He nudged her legs further apart with his knee, just wide enough to allow his fingers to find her clit. She hooked her leg over his, craving more contact. He glanced down to find her biting hard into her lower lip, stifling the beautiful noise his ears craved. That wouldn't do.

"Uh-uh. Open up."

_"Make me,"_ she whisper-snarled, and after a moment of stunned silence, he whispered back, "... If you insist."

_Shouldn't have said that, _she thought feverishly. _What is he - ?_

She felt his hips shift against her behind. He withdrew almost entirely from her heat; the slow slide of his member wracked her body with delicious tremors. He plunged back inside from a different angle, sliding firmly against a bundle of nerves that -

_"Uuuuh ... !"_

The sound she made was like orchestral music to his ears, a stirring wail. He did it again, but especially slow, just to hear her call out, to feel her claw desperately at his arm and his hip as he moved. Then he kept doing it, rocking his pelvis until her body picked up his rhythm and rocked back. Kyoko was only vaguely aware that she had made a sound at all, consumed as she was by the feel of him churning thick inside her, of that volatile spot inside wrecking sublime havoc throughout her body.

"_God_, I love the sounds you _make_," he rasped into her ear, too far gone to even pretend to gloat or tease, one hand between her legs, one arm around her waist, holding this willing captive for dear life. He throbbed once but hard and slowed his pace for fear of losing himself inside her, he wasn't about to disappoint her, not for anything in the world.

_Not yet, not yet, dear god, not yet ..._

All at once she felt that now-familiar tightening inside her, the coil loading, but not close enough to springing. She couldn't fight it if she tried, and she was well past trying, with his fingertips rubbing in delicious circles against her. There was no going back, and she didn't want to go back, she might explode, and not in a good way, if she went back.

_There are seven days in a week, _she thought for no reason at all, the observation - if you could even call it that - dawning with perfect clarity, as though it were the key to some grand mystery. Then the moment was there, _right_ there, so close it wasn't possible it hadn't arrived yet, maybe time had stopped, but then she felt that telltale twitch from deep within, rebounding off of his cock and back again as he moved at that hard pace inside and out, and it was _here_. Here and _now_.

He felt that same twitch as she did, but it wasn't nearly enough of a warning. One moment passed, tense. Another, then another, and suddenly she was seizing around his cock tight enough to wring him dry, bringing him over the edge right after her. A rushing sensation filled his head as though he were being flung from a high, high place; he felt his seed emptying into her, filling her until he had nothing more to give and the powerful spasms released their grip on him. She shuddered as he slipped free of her.

Minutes passed like centuries as their breathing slowed and slowed.

"Are you alright?" he asked, suddenly nervous despite the pleasure-drugged drowsiness that tugged at his bones. "How ... was it?"

Sagging limp and sated against his arm, she could find only one word as her mind clouded.

"Sovereign." The next thing out of her mouth was a gentle snore.

It took a moment to process through the fog of his mind. Then he realized.

_Like an emperor,_ was his last coherent thought before he succumbed to the same afterglow that had Kyoko down for the count.

__**. . .**_  
><em>

Several hours later, in the pale light of a barely cracked dawn, Kuon Hizuri found himself at the mercy of a creature he hadn't expected to find in his apartment. He had experienced much in his young life. But he had _never_ had a tigress curled up in his lap.

Until now, of course.

"I mean it, Kuon -!" Kyoko said with adorable menace, fingers clinging clawlike to the front of his rumpled shirt. She leaned against him, her slight weight pressing him back against the couch cushion he was propped up against. Her copper hair was a spiked, charming mess. The sunrise filtering through the gap in the curtains set her eyes ablaze, evoking a tiger's gaze.

"I _know_." He tried to sound put out, but he could only grin lazily at the pretty pout that pursed her lips.

"If, during the course of this commercial," she reiterated, "you make so much as a _passing reference_ to that blasted hammer, I'll throttle you where you sit!" As if to make good on her words, she brought her hands up to his throat, her wrists cradling the sides of his neck as her fingers played rather willfully in his hair. If she had any idea of how damned tempting she was at that moment, she didn't let on.

"So domineering ... This bodes well for later." He chucked her under the chin with his knuckle and nearly lost it when, blushing indignantly at his words, she tried to bite his finger.

"Oh, hush, and press play already!" she demanded as she struggled out of his reach, lowering her head onto the opposite armrest and propping her legs up onto his lap. He scooped up the remote from the floor, flipped to the channel they wanted and waited. Then, the Kyuara commercial rolled in its deranged entirety:

**_A city square at night, the people bustling even at this hour, a Jumbotron playing the old Kyuara commercial of the two girls frolicking and splashing one another in a field. This was cut short by an absolutely terrified news anchor._**

**_"We interrupt this broadcast for an emergency announcement! Hostile aliens have landed in - !"_**

_**The enormous screen ruptured suddenly in a blast of explosive light. In the center of the shattered wreck was a gaping hole spewing sparks and smoke. Following the trajectory of the missile strike, the camera panned back to reveal a large hand-held cannon. The pan continued down to the shoulder onto which it was hoisted and the goddesslike figure in black to which it belonged. **_

_**A swift cut to the people panicking in the streets, figures darting for cover and knocking into each other in their haste. Then a floating figure in a yellow cloak dominated the screen. She lifted her hands, parting the cloak to reveal sheer yellow tights and a leotard the color of the cloak which had concealed it. From her hands came jagged bolts of yellow lightning that blew up whatever they struck. The panic in the streets escalated. The sky roiled with hellish red clouds; a wicked, insane laugh rang through the air, loud enough to be heard even over the screams of the poor pedestrians.**_

_**Cut to a ruby-red clad figure with a similarly crimson braid jumping from the top of one building to the chaos in the streets, bringing down a red hammer that sent a jagged line of destruction many yards long.**_

_**Cut to an army's worth of police officers arriving on the scene as the three alien figures converged, standing as one amidst their handwork as the leader of the fleet held a bullhorn in his shaking hand.**_

**_"What are your demands?" the officer asked of them._**

**_In reply, the three figures lifted their weapons to the sky. A beam of white-hot light descended from the clouds._**

**_At the end of this beam ... was a six pack containing two of each new Kyuara flavor._**

**_"You landed on this planet ... to bring us soft drinks," the policeman holding the bullhorn said, all the disbelief in the world turning his tone flat.  
><em>**

**_The three flavors exchanged glances, confused as to this underwhelmed response. "Well, yes," said Blackberry. The other two flavors nodded in confirmation._**

**_"Y-You couldn't have done that without tearing up the city or .. ?"  
><em>**

**_"DRINK IT, MORTAL," Cherry roared, lifting her hammer with implied threat.  
><em>**

**_"Okay, okay!" the policeman snapped. "You, rookie! Get out there and taste it!"_**

**_A very young, very weak and nervous looking fellow in a uniform that didn't fit him right moved to the front of the line as his fellow officers shrunk back, handguns cocked but their legs ready to bolt at a moment's notice. The rookie approached the supernatural trio, pale and fidgety, his steps halting. He kneeled to the six pack, pulled a can of Lemon Lightning free and popped the tab, flinching back at the sound as though he expected real lightning to come out. When this didn't happen, he brought the yellow can to his lips and took a reluctant sip as every eye was fixed on him._**

**_The young man's eyes widened. "Oh, hey, that's really good," he said, cracking a surprised smile.  
><em>**

**_"SUCCESS!" Blackberry yelled.  
><em>**

**_Cut to the trio walking away from the chaos they had wrecked at though nothing happened._**

**_"I think that went rather well," Cherry said as the three flavors trotted towards the sunset down a deserted and crumbling street.  
><em>**

**_"Could have been worse," Lemon chimed in, giving up on dodging bits of rubble and just hovering lazily over it.  
><em>**

_**Blackberry holstered her cannon. "Yeah. Where are we going next?"**  
><em>

_**"I'm thinking Disneyland ..." Cherry said contemplatively.**_

_**The Kyuara logo appeared on the screen briefly with an accompanying thud, as though it were literally being stamped there.**_

Kuon laughed so hard his gut he thought he would tear a stomach muscle. Kyoko rolled her eyes.

"... May I have my dress back now?" she asked.

He grinned, his eyes lingering over the sight of her in nothing but one of his shirts.

"No. No, you may not."

She pounced on him, demanding to know where he had hidden her clothes. He tickled her mercilessly. She bit him with cunning precision. They grappled for several minutes, pinching, biting, rolling until they were out of breath but still unwilling to surrender.

"Give up?" she asked once she managed to topple him onto his back.

"Never," he said.

Kyoko leaned over him, eyes aglow with love. "Do you swear?"

And with all the solemnity of a man in love, Kuon Hizuri sat up, pulled her close and said: "You're damn right I do."

After a few more minutes of tussling, he went off in search of her dress, accepting defeat at her hands - or her thighs rather, she nearly squeezed the breath out of him with them. Besides, they couldn't laze about half-naked all day.

He smirked as he walked back from the bedroom with her dress and leggings. She was in for the surprise of her life, as he had only admitted to taking her out for breakfast.

Which was the truth, of course. Just not the whole truth.

There was ring-shopping to be done, after all.

* * *

><p><strong>My first ever fully Completed story! Aaaah!<strong>

**We did it, you guys! And I do mean _we_. I couldn't have done it without y'all, without your reviews and insights and support. ****Thanks for being so patient. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. I know I did. **

***That line went through several permutations and survived many draft edits before I realized that it was the SB equivalent of "Like A BOSS". I slightly ashamed, but not really. I regret nothing. NOTHING.**

**Also, that Kyuara commercial was _meant_ to be MST3K-ish bad (meaning the kind of movies they riffed, not the show itself, it was awesome) **


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